Sometimes I'll present a work to the public and listen to the responses-then pull it back, shape it, and put it back out.

Michael Jackson is a very weird impulse. It was the exploration of something overtly pop, to the point where pop is kitsch. It's also an exaggeration when placed across from the race riots. Because again you have the police department and you have Michael Jackson.

I was working in the gap where Martin Luther King, Jr. quoted communism and Warhol appropriated the protest image and named it riot, which is precisely what King didn't want his cause to be associated with. But that was the very thing that made it sexy to the art world. So I played between the two associations.

Sometimes I'll present a work to the public and listen to the responses-then pull it back, shape it, and put it back out.