Whenever I give a talk about my work I am invariably asked who my influences are. Not what my influences are, but who. As if the gutter, misunderstandings, memories, sex, dreams, and books matter less than the forebears do. After all, in terms of influences, it is as much the guy who mugged me on 10th Street, or my beloved dog who passed away much too early, as it was Giotto or Diane Arbus.

I wanted to spend a long time making something beautiful. […] The pattern of the fabric came from a book of embroidery designs. They were line drawings. I traced them, adjusted the scale, and painted them in color with fabric paint on a length of linen that I dyed with diluted coffee on my stove at home.

I always try to get people to focus less, or at least not first, on finding ‘meaning’ or a ‘theme’ in the work, but to focus on what it is exactly, what is it physically made of and how it is made. A lot of times metaphors are almost embedded in the medium.