Michael C. McMillen Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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 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 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 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 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 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

• 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 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 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

• 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

• 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

Page 2 of 2

First

← Prev

1

2

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin