Just do your work. And if the world needs your work it will come and get you. And if it doesn’t, do your work anyway. You can have fantasies about having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I’m given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one’s own vision.

- Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith Silver Eye Brooch

Lucy's Daughters

I trust my work. It's a collaboration with the material, and when it's viewed, it's a collaboration with the world. 

-- Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith

take heart

"We take heart in ourselves for being a conglomerate of things that don’t necessarily work out. We are temporal and fragile, but we get a strength from being mended and repaired. That in-between of existence..." 

-- Kiki Smith

Repetition

“Prints mimic what we are as humans: we are all the same and yet every one is different. I think there’s a spiritual power in repetition, a devotional quality, like saying rosaries.”

—Kiki Smith, quoted in the Daily Princetonian, December 11, 2003.

Pool of Tears 2 (after Lewis Carroll) by Kiki Smith.
Etching, aquatint, and drypoint with watercolor addition.

"Oh I think that’s deadly when you try to tell people how to think. You just want to empower them to take the chance on themselves. That’s what you do when you’re older, or when you reach maturity, you try to give what you can to the next generation."

--Kiki Smith

Print by Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith, Coming Forth, 2008

Ribs, 1987. Terracotta, ink, and thread, Kiki Smith. Photo: Kathryn Carr