Marcel Dzama Quotes

I have always wished I could learn to be a potter. I love collecting ceramics; it would be so fulfilling to create something lovely.

I always saw photography as a way to get to film.

If I hadn't been a designer, I'd have been a painter. I began as a painter and learned the craft of pottery in order to support myself.

I used to sculpt a bit as a kid.

My love for pottery started completely by chance when a good friend of mine recommended I take a class. When I sat down at a pottery wheel, it was like love at first sight. It was so deeply meditative, and I felt connected right away.

When I was in art school, I thought art was something I would learn how to do, and then I would just do it. At a certain point I realized that it wasn't going to work like that. Basically, I would have to start over every day and figure out what art was going to be.

I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand.

Earthenware is like people, it needs to be well treated.

I think the idea of embracing the process, creating something, no matter how thin it is, that you can call a starting point - whether it's a word or it's an idea, or it's a little piece of narrative that you might base a film on - starting that journey of making the work. That's also something that every individual does very differently.

To me art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risk.

My father did think I should get interested in television. But I had very little interest in television and it wasn't something I wanted to do. I really never thought about going to work on big feature films in Hollywood. But when we made The Householder, Columbia Pictures bought it. Who would have ever imagined?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

I really don't see myself being apart from music. I like doing lots of different things. I've been involved in film for quite a long time and I just like doing film.

The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.

A film that can be described in words is not really a film.

Don't only practise your art, but force your way into its secrets.

I didn't see an abstract painting until I was 18, when I went to Vincent Price's house and saw Richard Niebencorn, Wolff, Jackson Pollack. He had an amazing collection. I didn't know people painted abstractly, I thought I was just doing something wholeheartedly.

Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself

I don't design. I don't paint. I absolutely never touch my works.

I didn't have any career design. I was not thinking about publishing or doing a record. I was just working. I was evolving. I wanted to really comprehend what I was doing before stepping too far out.

I have disciplined myself when I'm working. When I discovered art, I realized that one could keep that search going within creation. But I also realize that in order to create the art, you have to stay, you can't go too far.

I am content to be a bric-a-bracker and a Ceramiker.

Every picture I make, every experience of my private life, every lesson I learn are the keys to my future. And I have faith in it.

Art is only a means to life, the life more abundant. It merely points the way.

When you listen to the music, you can also see the film or read the article, and it's all part of the same journey that you get to take with the artist you're interested in. It's a balancing act.