Every memorial in its time has a different goal.

We know under Nebraska there is an underground aquifer that is probably underneath the whole state, but what form does it take? I kind of want to focus on that, for almost political means, because we keep digging more wells. We're not replenishing, and we're having a crisis in water around the world. But how do you visualize it? I don't know, so I know what I want to study.

You have to have conviction and completely question everything and anything you do. No matter how much you study, no matter how much you know, the side of your brain that has the smarts won't necessarily help you in making art.

OK, it was black, it was below grade, I was female, Asian American, young, too young to have served. Yet I think none of the opposition in that sense hurt me.

You really can't function as a celebrity. Entertainers are celebrities. I'm an architect. I'm an artist. I make things.

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.

For the most part things never get built the way they were drawn.