Theaster Quotes & Sayings

I grew up always wanting to act, always knowing that's what I wanted to do. — Kristen Hager

I shoot very little film. If you just do coverage you're shooting any number of potential films instead of just one, and I was shooting just one specific film. Film is cheap but time is expensive. — William Monahan

What I think museums do very well is that they say to a public, "We have some stuff that's worth looking at." — Theaster Gates

I think I'm a full-time artist, a full-time urban planner, and a full-time preacher with an aspiration of no longer needing any of those titles. Rather, I'm trying to do what for some seems a very messy work or a complicated work. — Theaster Gates

The reality in the neighborhood that I live in is: if I don't constantly reconcile what I have against what other people don't, either I need to leave and be around other people who have what I have, or I'm constantly engaged in this kind of dynamic flow of opportunity and sharing. — Theaster Gates

He who writes prose builds his temple to Fame in rubble; he who writes verses builds it in granite. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Modernism was influenced by what they call a primativist ethic. — Theaster Gates

I am Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, of the blood of Old Valyeria. I am the dragon's daughter. — George R R Martin

I think I'm passionately allowing myself to be influenced by the things that are around me. — Theaster Gates

I have the willingness to think fully about where opportunities are and where they live. — Theaster Gates

Arguing with reality it like trying to teach a cat to bark. — Byron Katie

I want to spend my time between the creation of ideas and the creation of things. — Theaster Gates

I was spawned by some pretty good people in this business - Mr. Astaire, Mr. Tracy. They stopped and took their time to talk to people. — Robert Wagner

My first experience with the creative was mopping tar. If you let the tar sit, it can get cold pretty quickly. And because the mops are so heavy, you've got to dip it and then ride it really fast. — Theaster Gates

[As Garibaldi says,] 'Sleep, my dear Chevalley, sleep, that is what Sicilians want, and they will always hate anyone who tries to wake them ... — Frances Mayes

I'm not a preacher, but I preach. I'm not a Buddhist, but I chant. I'm not race theorist, but I have questions and ponderances around the complexities of race and class and culture wherever I am. — Theaster Gates

The fact that the work is affirmed by the Museum of Contemporary Art I think sends continued signals that this is worth paying attention to, looking at, and understanding. — Theaster Gates

Everybody values their train, but they want to zero-out other people's trains. — Bob Walker

Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The industrial civilisation is based on the consumption of energy resources that are inherently limited in quantity and that are about to become scarce. When they do, competition for what remains will trigger dramatic economic and geopolitical events; in the end, it may be impossible for even a single nation to sustain industrialism as we have know it in the twentieth century. — Richard Heinberg

If we imagine that the only right that we have is to make commodifiable objects, then we limit our practice, and we limit the great potential for an understanding between collectors, curators and galleries. — Theaster Gates

I actually no longer use 'art' as the framing device. I think I'm just kind of practicing things, practicing life, practicing creation. — Theaster Gates

There were a series of moments when I decided that art was important, and it was an important vehicle for me to express my interest in spaces. — Theaster Gates

Gnawing with my teeth my bonds in sunder, I gain'd my freedom. — William Shakespeare

Sometimes the creating that we do is creating a platform that allows other creative people to pitch in. — Theaster Gates

It's not really about the material. It's about our capacity to shape things. — Theaster Gates

What does that mean, really? Be good? How does a person know she's falling
within her mother's interpretation of Be Good? "Always!" I called back. What else was I going to say? Though I was tempted to just once say, "I will never be good - I am Satan, I want to drink your blood, have orgies, and hurt bunnies." It would totally amuse me, but somehow I don't think my mother would see the humor in it. — Erin Lynn

It's really exciting to know that people want to use the house as a house and want to live there although it hasn't been a used, occupied space in 50 or 60 years. — Theaster Gates

All kinds of performance practices have a certain register of power or solemnity. — Theaster Gates

Back when childhoods were often so protracted, it is unsurprising that so many people got into the lifelong habit of believing, even after their parents were gone, that somebody was always watching over them - God or a saint or a guardian angel or the stars or whatever. People — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The reason artists want to have works in museums is that we want our works to be seen by as many people as possible and we want our ideas to be understood in more complicated ways. — Theaster Gates

When I play my best golf, I feel as if I'm in a fog, standing back watching the earth in orbit with a golf club in my hands. — Mickey Wright

I sometimes am challenged to imagine where the timbre of art should be. Should it be about objects that point to this current moment, or how objects are related to ideas of this current moment? — Theaster Gates

Everything is raw material to me. Land is raw material ... I take one form and transform it into other forms. — Theaster Gates

I believe that beauty is a basic service. — Theaster Gates