I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this. Art is something that you cannot really put a label on. When it works it works! Now we can define why it works in terms of design and color and uniformity and the overall way it just grabs ahold of us, but art is art when it reaches beyond definition. My old friend Enrico Pinardi used to talk about 'clever artist' who gain fame or notoriety in the art world by making very slick art-like objects that critics would swoon over! I am always wondering if and questioning my work as 'art-like' or something more????I am fascinated with making things to the point of perhaps not really taking the proper time to know what it is I'm making and why. I do think about what I'm doing, but is it enough? Much of my early work was based on my relationship with societal structures like religion and politics. I think in someways it still is, but admittedly I really just work everyday and stumble a lot. In stumbling I perhaps find my way to making something that has a poetry to it. But if asked what that poetry is or means I will stumble and often act like a deer in the headlights! Art to me is a need, a survival mechanism. Without making, I would be nothing I think. I know that 90% of what I make is done in the Enrico Pinardi definition of 'clever.' I just hope that the 10% that i also make is something that has the substance of art. Photograph by Richard Sayer