49 Quotes by Kiki Smith

One's self is always shifting in relationship to beauty and you always have to be able to incorporate yourself or your new self into life. Like your skin starts hanging off your arms and stuff, and then you have to think, well that's really beautiful too. It just isn't beautiful in a way that I knew it was beautiful before.

I think making things beautiful is important. But often what's first considered ugly is beautiful, too.

It’s one of my loose theories that Catholicism and art have gone well together because both believe in the physical manifestation of the spiritual world.

The point isn't to know what you're doing. The point is to have an experience doing something.

I like that feeling when you’re making art, that you’re taking the energy out of your body and putting it into a physical object. I like things that are labor-intensive : you make a little thing and another little thing and another little thing, and eventually you see a possibility.

Some people think or expect that you should make the same kinds of art forever because it creates a convenient narrative... I want my work to embody my inherent contradictions.

You can have fantasies about having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I’m given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one’s own vision.

My iPhone has changed my life – I spend hours taking photos of the sidewalk as I walk down the street. I like the casualness, that it’s low-resolution.

I think making things beautiful is important. But often what’s first considered ugly is beautiful, too.