Michael C. McMillen Quotes

Quotes about:

• The idea of flux, kind of constant change, whether it be our sense of time or geological time or cosmic time. It's always there, and I think that maybe it's a way of dealing with the idea of mortality, trying to acknowledge the fact that all things change, and whereas, maybe death is the end of one state of being it's the beginning of something else. I'm not talking about going to heaven or being reincarnated as a toad, I'm talking about the idea that the molecules in our bodies, or at least the atoms, were here at the beginning of the universe, and the sense that we are basically matter.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Thinking, Heaven, Trying

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I see myself as a very eclectic person and artist. I use all kinds of sources for the work as maybe some large pieces. Ideas come from all kinds of areas; literature, popular culture, dreams, you name it.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Dream, Artist, Culture

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• For me, my work is pretty much a lot of my identity. I mean I live to work, basically. With money I'm able to earn I don't put into clothes especially or things like that. I use it as a way of buying time to work. That's how I see money for me. It represents time to be by myself working on these ideas. So in that sense, the work is kind of a surrogate religion, maybe not so surrogate, maybe it is part religion.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Mean, Identity, Kind

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• We're living history all the time, in the papers, in the news, you think about stuff and it goes into your brain and you think about it and it comes out somehow. You have an idea; you've heard a phrase, or you're angry, or something disturbs you, or something seems paradoxical to you, you explore that idea, much like a writer would explore maybe an idea through metaphor. Maybe artists use their vehicle to explore ideas, so I think the things that interest me are the kind of idea of continuous change and how nothing stays the same and it's always disintegrating into something more.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Artist, Thinking, Brain

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• A large part of California is a sensual state. It has a huge range of geographical features and in addition to the deserts and the mountains and the huge coast line. The fact that we don't have harsh seasons, like they have in the East, means you can have convertible cars. There's more sunshine, per year here, and it affects people psychologically and physically. I think California has always been an attractive place for many, a lot of strange cults have been here over the years. Again, it's an experimental place.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Mean, Sunshine, Thinking

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  5 Copy quote

• I think at one point, a whole new younger generation of critics come in and they're really aware of zeitgeist in their group, and the older artists tend to get forgotten as their critics retire and do other things or stop paying attention. So there's a factor of aging that I think is to be considered, too. As a middle-aged artist, you kind of get put on a shelf for the young ones.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Artist, Thinking, Attention

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I think that to be a good artist, you have to have ideas as well as manual skills. It's a blend of the two, hopefully, and there are a lot of people there that can do things well, but they might not be devoid of good ideas or maybe they're not especially interesting ideas, or maybe there's a good idea that a person is unable to execute in the manner that does justice to the idea.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Artist, Thinking, People

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I think good art has good concept behind it. Nothing can always articulate fully the way a Ph.D. candidate can articulate their thesis, because artists work with a combination of intuition and intellect blended together and out comes whatever they produce. So it's a blend of kind of a sensual response to material and an intellectual response to idea, maybe a blend of the two.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Art, Thinking, Intellectual

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I've always seen process of crafting as part of the thinking process. It really forms the gestation of the work. I'll get an idea; I want to express this idea, sometimes I'll start it, but during the process of making the object - if it's an object or a painting - it changes. It never goes in a linear progression from A to Zed. It's always this kind of circuitous, stumbling, groping in the dark kind of process of evolving.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Dark, Thinking, Painting

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  5 Copy quote

• I love the idea of engaging the object, whether it be architecture or a piece of good graphic design, or a good painting, or piece of sculpture, or even a piece of industrial manufactured object. A piece of engineering can be quite beautiful, too, or a photomicrograph, or a cosmic photograph. We're physical beings and why deny that. So in that sense, it's very sensual to have an object that has the power to communicate some emotion or a state or give you some sense.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Beautiful, Giving, Design

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I don't go to galleries every day because it's so rare that I like what I see. There's a lot of bad art out there and a lot of it is because art has found its way into the university, where it probably shouldn't be.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Art

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I happen to like regionalism, whatever that means. I like the idea of art that somehow specifically reflects some aspect of a community or culture from which was created, the idea of uniform art sounds dreadfully boring and almost fascistic in its implication. So in that sense, I really celebrate the idea of a place that allows for a range of ideas and certainly L.A. does that.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Art, Mean, Community

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I like the idea of watching the sun go down in the ocean. I've always felt comfortable about that, I like sunsets. There's something about a westward movement that seems fascinating, although the Irish refer to going West as a metaphor for dying. I see it differently.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Ocean, Sunset, Dying

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• L.A. as a geographical entity is very much a mixture of surf, desert, and the mountains, earthquakes and urban sprawl. Within an hour of driving, you can be out into the desert. I like that very much about living on the edge of a continent, conceptually is an interesting place to be. You're at this kind of juncture of a tectonic plate. The idea that the Pacific Ocean is right behind us, on a macro scale, is an interesting place to be.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Ocean, Interesting, Mountain

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• One nice thing about L.A. is that you can work here in privacy, but that also works against you because you can get forgotten here, too. I think in New York, it's hard to be left alone. It's hard to have privacy whereas here, you can have it.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Nice, Thinking, Privacy

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I can't make things I don't feel passionately about. I've never been able to. Years ago when I was going through college, I was trying to earn some extra money by making motel paintings and it was the hardest work I've ever done in my life, psychically. It was just torture.

  Michael C. McMillen

  College, Trying, Done

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I don't refer to myself as a sculptor, but I use the word "visual artist." I prefer that, because that leaves the medium wide open because I've got ideas for film and video, things I haven't had the time yet to really fully explore, probably never will, but I want to be able to have that option open to kind of do that.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Artist, Kind, Film

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• Making art can be maddening at times and frustrating and not always rewarding, frequently not rewarding. But you do it because you believe in it and you do it as a passion that drives you, and it sustains you during those lean times.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Art, Believe, Passion

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I want to create objects that will stimulate the viewer in ways that I am stimulated by these objects. Now that's an ideal situation and the artist has no control over what his audience is going to think, but they can try to communicate some quality, some poetry through the work and just hope that the viewer has something in the vicinity of a similar experience.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Thinking, Artist, Trying

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I don't need to control the mind of my viewer. Now this might sound contradictory because I want to make these installations set up an environment that will produce a certain kind of experience in the viewer, but beyond a certain point, I take hands off and leave it up to chance and personal experience. So maybe it's a marriage of control and no control we're talking about where the artist produces the artifact or the environment and then walks away from it, and the second half of the equation is the viewer and their personal history and how they feel about what they're experiencing.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Artist, Mind, Chance

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• Being an artist is two things. You accumulate experience and time, and if you have something that's interesting, you have to be persistent. That's very important. There's nothing instant about it. It's a way of life, actually, where you choose to spend your life doing this activity called making art.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Art, Interesting, Important

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I love the idea of carrying on some kind of tradition using some of the artifacts from people that touched my life. They're a continuum, too. I still use my father's tools and some of my grandfather's tools. There's a very romantic streak in me. I confess, I'm a romantic, but I like the idea.

  Michael C. McMillen

  People, Kind, Tradition

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• A person who is driven to spend their time and energy doing something must believe in it, whether they want recognition for it, money from it, or if it's a cathartic experience to do it, whatever their motivation that is valid for them. That's the artist's motivator.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Motivation, Believe, Energy

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I don't keep up with the art world. It's out there and if I did that too much, I wouldn't get my own work done. So I look at it every so often, "Oh, yeah, oh, okay," and go back to work. Life isn't that long. You got to do what you can when you have it.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Art, Long, Done

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

• I think we all have a tendency to have things. Even, I've noticed, people on the street collect things. So I think there's some kind of human impulse to collect. That's why they build museums, I guess.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Thinking, People, Kind

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

  4 Copy quote

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