7 Quotes by Miriam Schapiro

Men think that sentiment is not valid; women think that sentiment is important.

Victor Papenack, who was teaching design, had his students making radios for a penny each that could be shipped to Third World people.

We really didn't have any literature telling us it was a good thing to be a woman artist. When I was trained, there were no precedents, and that was something to get really angry about.

If you were to survey celebrated women, with every step toward real success there came a baby.

Women have always collected things and saved and recycled them because leftovers yielded nourishment in new forms. The decorative functional objects women made often spoke in a secret language, bore a covert imagery. When we read these images in needlework, in paintings, in quilts, rugs and scrapbooks, we sometimes find a cry for help, sometimes an allusion to a secret political alignment, sometimes a moving symbol about the relationships between men and women.

When I look back on the years of excessive self-doubt, I wonder how I was able to make my paintings. In part, I managed to paint because I had a desire, as strong as the desire for food and sex, to push through, to make an image that signified.

I question the negative connotations of fabric, of ribbon, of lace. I turn these symbols of our imprisonment around.