I begin by imagining an artwork verbally. I try to describe in writing what the project is, what it is trying to do. I need to understand the artwork without giving it a specific materiality or solid form.

I probably have fundamentally antisocial tendencies. I never took one extracurricular activity. I just failed utterly at that level. Part of me still rebels against that.

I'm as much interested in the form-making as well as getting you to think about what we're doing to the world around us.

I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was.

When I was very little, we would get letters from China, in Chinese, and they' be censored. We were a very insular little family.

It terrified me to have an idea that was solely mine to be no longer a part of my mind, but totally public.

I do think the smaller-scale studio works have that incredible love of data crunching, whereas I would say the large-scale earthworks tend to be much more stripped-down. With the mappings, as connected as they are to a much more analytical idea, what's a map? And can I make a map about time? I think the first time was Hurricane Sandy, the flood plane; a moment in time, but indelibly marked on any of us who were in the city. Mapping time is something that I'm really interested in.