Eva Zeisel Quotes

I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand.

Now I really make the little idea from clay, and I hold it in my hand. I can turn it, look at it from underneath, see it from one view, hold it against the sky, imagine it any size I like, and really be in control almost like God creating something.

All creative work begins by doing something with the hands. Creation is simply a problem and design is the way out.

Art happens when anyone in the world takes any kind of material and fashions it into a deliberate statement.

You are the human clay," Vosch whispers fiercely in my ear. "And I am Michelangelo. I am the master builder, and you will be my masterpiece.

I like manual things, doing things with my hands, the feeling of touching.

Sculpture is like farming. If you just keep at it, you can get quite a lot done.

I do everything. Of course, I have 50 people who work for me to do the drudgery of mold making and all the foundry. This is an enormous task. But every stroke in these sculptures is from my hands.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

For a sculptor, a painter, a weaver, a potter, the dialogue between one's materials and what one makes from them is easy to see: discover a new material or a new way to use a familiar one, and new things can be made, sometimes leading to the discovery of more new material, leading to more creation.

You find me at work; excuse the dust on my blouse. I sculpt my marble myself.

I was digging in the backyard to get my own clay and making pottery. And then I started taking pictures and built my own darkroom. I would go out at six in the morning and just take pictures.

I have always wished I could learn to be a potter. I love collecting ceramics; it would be so fulfilling to create something lovely.

It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.

Maybe people have no idea how much work is behind a picture. It can seem very effortless, but there is a lot of work. It's exactly like doing ballet. It's hours and hours, but when you go onstage, it's just the pleasure of dancing.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

Often when I talk about what I do, making isn't just this inevitable function tacked on at the end.

From the time I started taking photographs, I started working with plastics. I've always treated plastic like it was marble or gemstone or fine glass. I've always gotten the most out of it. I love it!

The most significant pieces for me are the ones that come from my drapings. It's emotional because they are created by my hand and then become a collaborative process in the atelier.

Looking at younger artists, like Varda Caivano and Kerstin Bratsch, I see that their work has something in common that is new to my generation. There's an effort to value the evidence of the hand and the handmade thing while also acknowledging the way in which the making of things with hands has such a complex, alienated place in our culture.

The first time I made a mold of my vampire teeth, I took pictures of that.

An orchestra can add some class, a historical vibe, but I believe you can get the same emotion from pottery wheels.

When I'm sculpting, I work with wood and clay, and though some say that an image is already in the material and the sculptor just has to discover it, I also believe you have an image in your head that you're trying to get to. So you're in a dialogue with the piece, a back-and-forth.

When I arrive in Los Angeles in the entertainment community, and I use implements like a shovel and a hammer, our society has distanced itself so far from working with its hands that those incredibly pedestrian skills are perceived as somehow being extraordinary.

Let me not forget the use of my own hands, that of a craftsman with eyes... that reflect the technology around me.