Mold clay into a bowl. The empty space makes it useful.
If a chair or a building is not functional, if it appears to be only art, it is ridiculous.
Design has to work. Art does not.
I see myself as the literary equivalent of a skilled lathe-operator, or a basket-weaver; a potter, maybe: I make mildly diverting objects that people want to buy.
I can't usually stomach a project after I finish it, but for those days and weeks and months that it's new to me, I do listen to it, and it might change over time, but it's about function.
African art is functional, it serves a purpose. It's not a dormant. It's not a means to collect the largest cheering section. It should be healing, a source a joy. Spreading positive vibrations.
My concern is never art, but always what art can be used for.
I made some salt and pepper shakers a while back and waited three years for them to come.
A hen's egg is, quite simply, a work of art, a masterpiece of design and construction with, it has to be said, brilliant packaging!
I don't create from a place of me making art for art's sake, but wanting my work to actually do stuff... tangible things.
A really fun fan moment was when a fan gave me a copy of 'Legend' that he had turned into a functional clock!
Art should be created for life, not for the museum.
I am for an art that tells you the time of day, or where such and such a street is. I am for an art that helps old ladies across the street.
I look at every piece of furniture and every object as an individual sculpture.
I love the idea of making records that people can use, records that have a sense of utility.
I believe that art is a tool and that, like all tools, it has functions. I also think it is important to know what the tool is for so that we can better know how and when to use it.
I'm quite into the idea of engineering being beautiful.
Architecture begins where engineering ends.
I'm so language-based and I'm so about communicating, and my art has always been very audience-based, and very about being functional and communicating something, and about feeling like I have to be heard.
I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity.
I think ceramics are so amazing because they're incredibly educational - you can buy something made in the 14th century, and it looks like it was made yesterday. There's something to be learned there, and ceramics can tell you the history of the time because they're functional vessels, ultimately.
You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless. Therefore art is never a document, although it can adopt that style.
Art is to be free. Design is to fix.
When I make my work, I am making what I hope to be something functional - a space for individual contemplation and reflection. I want my art to be useful.
I think with my hands. I design things to be touched-not for a museum. A piece is ready when it has the shape of something to cherish.
