I maintain my identity by regular work, there is always labor when inspiration has fled, but inspiration returns quicker when identity and the work s… - David Smith

..that men could view as natural, without reverence or awe but to whom such things were natural
because they were statements of peaceful pursuit – and joined in the phenomenon of life

I knew metal working before I knew Calder [famous for his sculptures, made in sheet metal], and Calder is one of our great men and he is earlier by a few years than any of the rest of us [in American Abstract Expressionism ]. Calder had worked in Paris quite a bit in the early days, though he did go to school here in New York at the Art Student's League.. .After my first year in college I had worked on the assembly line in the Studebaker plants up in Indiana..

Possibly I can explain my own procedure more easily. When I begin a sculpture I'm not always sure how it is going to end. In a way it has a relationship to the work before, it is in continuity with the previous work — it often holds a promise or a gesture toward the one to follow.