Some of your teachers are actually closer in age to you than you think.

I think I needed to really move past my first public work as memorialist, and be equally balanced. It's a bit unusual, to be working between the architecture, the art, and what I would say is a synthesis, the memorials - they're problem solving, but it's very symbolic. You get this triangle; I need to be balanced with those three. They're all equally a part of who I am. I love how different they are, and yet they're coming out the same thing, whatever it is.

We were unusually brought up; there was no gender differentiation. I was never thought of as any less than my brother.

Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.

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 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.

The role of art in society differs for every artist.