WEBVTT

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Leonardo Drew:
When I get up in the morning, I know exactly

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what I'm going to be doing.

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I'll be working.

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I don't know what the works are actually going
to be about,

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but they find their way.

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I was drawing and using colored inks and things
like that.

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People in the neighborhood, the projects where
I grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut,

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they were telling me about this place called ABCD
Cultural Art Center.

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They said that well you have to go there because
they have paints and canvases.

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And I said, "Wow, this is all this stuff for
free?"

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So once I made my way over to them, I ended
up with these mentors.

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A fantastic group of artists who were just
there helping kids.

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And I was one of them.

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I was approached by DC Comics and Heavy Metal
magazine and Marvel Comics to, to do work

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for them.

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When I saw this black and white reproduction
of Jackson Pollock's work, when I was in the

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library in high school, that was it.

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And that was my first take on what fine art was.

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Imagine Jackson Pollock in black and white,
but it still elicited such a visceral response

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that when seeing it I was kind of like wow,
this is amazing.

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From that point on, I began to question what
I was doing up against what I had seen and

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what I had felt.

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More actually what I had felt.

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Probably would have been like fifteen.

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I was still exhibiting a certain type of work,
but it had touches of what I had realized.

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When it came time for me to go to college,
it was pretty easy to make a decision like,

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okay, you could just do college or you use
your talents to go out and have a life or

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make money.

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It was pretty easy.

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It was like, you go to the place where it's
going to get you closer to Jackson Pollock

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I studied at Cooper Union.

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I was probably the greediest person there
because I digested everything.

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I mean, I was in the foundry, the woodshop.

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You know, like making paper.

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Photography.

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And then I asked for an extra year.

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I had to fight for it, but they gave it to
me. [laughs]

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My ability to be able to draw and paint well
actually was getting in the way of me realizing

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something larger.

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It's hard to get past something so beautifully
done and then at the same time ask the question,

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what's underneath that?

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I decided it was time for me to stop using
what I did well.

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So what I did was almost literally tied my
hands.

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I said, okay, you can no longer paint or draw.

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And you're going to have to find another way
to create.

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This is where I would've stopped drawing actually,

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this is where it ended.

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It was like seven years before I made a breakthrough.

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So from 1982 to 1989, took me seven years
of just experimenting.

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This piece came out, which was "Number 8."

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Animal parts, rope, string.

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Everything that you can possibly imagine is
in this, all entangled in this one monster

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of a piece.

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It was made up of all the failures or at least
what I perceived as failures.

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If you're a "Number 8,"" then that means there
is like 1 to 7 that are no longer there.

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It's just like they were all a part of "Number 8."

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One of the reasons why I actually number the
works is just to give the viewer enough room

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to find themselves in the work.

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The work should become a mirror.

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There are three areas on this piece, of importance
that I should pay attention to.

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So I can't place something here without knowing
what's going on over there.

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So this tells this area what has to happen.

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And that tells this what has to happen.

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And then they speak to one another.

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So I know there's a gradation going on.

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For instance, that has a sweep you see.

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"Boom."

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By the time it reaches the bottom, this is
the top, it's going to be epic.

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[laughs]

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That way of creating is actually only a microcosm
of how I make things,

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because when I'm working on this I'm paying attention to that.

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And that's telling me what has to happen over
here too.

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And I can see things that are not working
over there,

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that I say, okay, make sure that that's not occurring here.

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And then this helps me by saying, oh you know
what,

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this needs that over there you know.

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So a lot of times I can rip things out.

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That piece actually is already made up of
at least four different pieces. Yeah.

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And the longer the work hangs around, the
better off it is.

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My number's usually seven.

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I'm rotating seven things.

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They're speaking to each other.

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But it is sometimes like seven crying babies.

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You're trying to get to this one, to that
one and you're bouncing around.

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And then they leave.

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I end up visiting these things in museums
or people's homes.

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And on the whole, those people, those folks

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or even security guards at museums end up knowing more about the works than I could
have,

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because they're living with them

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and they've had much longer amount of time to
experience them.

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And I only have them for a second.

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I remember making a piece in my apartment.

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At the time I was living in Washington Heights.

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A friend of mine came over and said, "Well
how are you going to get it out?".

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I said, I hadn't thought of that that.

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I wasn't really thinking about taking the
piece out of there.

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I got smart enough to sort of at least break
these things up into like increments of 24" by 24"

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plates so that when I do hang it, you
know at least if there was no help around, I could do it by myself.

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Being a person of color is one of those things
that you know you will have to contend with

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as an artist.

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You're going to have to realize it and you're
going to have something to say.

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When I actually did this show back in 1992,
there were things that sort of came out of

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that exhibition, which I have not necessarily
returned to, but they have definitely been

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things that people will probably continue
to remember and write about, even if the work

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has absolutely at this point nothing to do
with cotton or ropes or things like that.

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There's a huge cotton wall piece that I had done.

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At the time I was using my friend Jack Whitten's
studio.

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And I didn't have a car; I didn't even have
a license.

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My goodness.

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And Jack was living down on Lispenard...which
is behind Canal Street.

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That's like, oh it's some almost thirty blocks.

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[laughs]

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So it's like, okay, I put the bale of cotton
on the dolly and pushed it in the street.

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And I remember the photographs that came out
from that.

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[laughs]

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Outrageous.

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For me, it was very practical to get from
A to B, but in fact, if you look at the photographs,

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it's like a political statement.

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Then from there it was like, okay, creating
the piece.

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My people's history is not about just black
people.

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It's about all of us.

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I mean there were things in that exhibition
that went through my body that were huge.

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In 1992, I got it all out.

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It got said.

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For me to just linger on that, it would be
almost doing the art a disservice.

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[saw whirring]

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I was there eleven years in a studio in San Antonio.

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I was always going back and forth from New
York to San Antonio.

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One of the issues that has consistently come
up when people write about the art

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is that they talk about found objects.

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Actually, I don't work with found objects.

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Most of my material are actually created in
the studio,

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so I actually go out and I buy material, brand new stuff.

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I actually have become the weather.

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My reasons for having a studio in San Antonio
had everything to do with the intensity of

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the heat and how I could actually weather
some of the materials that I was working with.

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But what I ended up doing was hoisting onto
the roof of the studio these

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eight-foot cattle troughs.

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Buy like six of them and I would cook the
materials, sometimes for months and years

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depending on what it is I was after.

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There is the artwork that you physically make,
but there's also the journey that happens

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on the inside.

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That body of work was emotionally heavy and
I just thought,

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what would happen if you took that away?

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Here we are again with this question.

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We're comfortable, how do I get to the next place?

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So when you get rid of all the things that
you find that are comfortable.

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So I said, okay, get rid of the rust.

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It was at that point that the Fabric Workshop
had asked me to come up with an idea for a

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piece as I was asking that question.

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And I said, what if I took just white paper--just
like Xerox paper, like

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really sixteen-pound paper--and transform that into something.

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What if I took objects and I wrapped the paper
around them

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and then released them from the objects?

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Boom, take a razor blade, you cut it away.

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Boom, take the object out.

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Boom, put it back together.

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And there's nothing underneath the white paper.

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Just the paper.

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So it's just a shell in the end.

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So you're getting really a ghost image.

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What happened was revealing.

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No matter what materials I end up using, once
you find your voice, that's it.

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[sander grinding]

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There is no escaping your past.

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With certainty, absolute certainty I can look
back

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on some of the configurations that I created

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and I can see those projects. I can see the landfill.

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We were right next to the dump.

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I mean literally we could see the dump from
our window and we could see the tractors going

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back and forth over the landfills.

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That was what I knew.

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I spent time at the dump.

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I can see the grid for instance.

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Interesting enough, people go on like, "Oh,
his connection is to minimalism."

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I say actually it's more like 
those gridded projects.

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When you're creating, there are satisfying
moments and then there are

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moments that are kind of like endpoints--or beginnings.

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My gallery approached me, "What if we allowed
you to take on the space?""

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I have the space for a month to actually create
in the space.

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What I did was, as always, bought materials
like the wood and stuff like that and began

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to wash it and burn it and transform it.

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What we ended up with was this dilapidated
wall.

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This thing was a one hundred and nine feet long.

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And monstrous.

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Just because something is big, bombastic,
and sensational

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does not necessarily mean that it's successful.

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It was like all of a sudden, I had this epiphany.

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It is time for you to start reaching again.

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This is not quite enough.

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I know this too well and I'm getting too comfortable
again.

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Now for the viewer, they can't know that.

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They can only know what you present to them.

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I'm finding out the work is becoming like
a monster sometimes in what it needs, and

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I just keep feeding it.

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The fact is I've almost set myself up in life
so that I can give completely or commit completely

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to this process of creating.

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I've never been married, I have no kids.

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I love kids, I love women. [laughs]

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But I don't have either.

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So that tells you something about my commitment
to like this life.

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We're all reaching.

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I'm not talking just about artists, but I
mean we all are reaching.

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As I'm creating, I know that I have the opportunity.

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Whatever I feel or know, I make into material.

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What a journey though.

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I've enjoyed it for all of my life and still
I'm intrigued.

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I still want to reach out.

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I still want to reach.

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I still want to reach.

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I still want to reach.

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There's no other way of doing it except for
this physical manifestation

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of what I've been through.

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If I were to say what my work was--actually
what my work was about--I couldn't tell you.

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Even if I knew, I probably wouldn't tell you. [laughs]

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[drill whirring]

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As I'm moving closer and closer to answering
questions, at the same time,

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I'm moving further away from the answers.

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So all I have to do at this point is continue
to place my body in the act

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of attempting to know.

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(ambient electronic music)

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To learn more about "Art in the Twenty-First Century"

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please visit us online at PBS.org/Art21

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