Page 42 - Studio International - October 1967

think we're still at the beginning of one of the biggest for me to stay life-size. It's easy to fabricate the pieces
outpourings of invention in American art. small or large if you really want to, but you have to be
`The only way that I seem to be able to operate myself interested in that kind of scale.
is on a basis of excruciating selectivity. I don't like being `I conceive the situation. Then I have to be very careful
drenched and bombarded by a non-discriminated mass of and ask the right person, for several reasons. A person's
things. I simply don't respond to that kind of collage, and inner set of attitudes comes out in the plaster somehow.
I suppose that's a temperamental thing. Why, I don't know, but it simply happens to be true. So
`I really am interested in the confrontation and/or the they have to. be capable of sensing what the situation is.
dialogue between two people. And that's made it necessary Often it's enough for me simply to describe the situation.

Couple at the stairs 1964
plaster and mixed media
120 x 104 x 96 in.
Sidney Janis Gallery,
New York
'I've been both voyeur and
participant in this situation.
I found the stairway in a
junkyard, the mailbox in a
house being wrecked, made
the ancient wall out of new
plywood and paint. I am still
startled when I walk into an
old hallway.'
Opposite
The butcher shop 1965
plaster and mixed media
94 x 99+ x 48 in.
Art Gallery of Ontario,
Toronto
'This is a requiem for my
father. My mother posed.'