I've spent most of my life in L.A. and I'm still amazed at things that I don't know about the place. There are a lot of places I've never been to yet and I may never even make it. There's so much here and there's so much of a variety in terms of culture now. It's amazing. It's all here in one big city. In a lot of ways, the city is unique in the world because it's hard to find another city that has the diversity and range. It's a microcosmic planet, if you look at it that way. And in that sense, it's very much an experimental city.
Michael C. McMillenA person who is driven to spend their time and energy doing something must believe in it, whether they want recognition for it, money from it, or if it's a cathartic experience to do it, whatever their motivation that is valid for them. That's the artist's motivator.
Michael C. McMillenI've spent most of my life in L.A. and I'm still amazed at things that I don't know about the place. There are a lot of places I've never been to yet and I may never even make it. There's so much here and there's so much of a variety in terms of culture now. It's amazing. It's all here in one big city. In a lot of ways, the city is unique in the world because it's hard to find another city that has the diversity and range. It's a microcosmic planet, if you look at it that way. And in that sense, it's very much an experimental city.
Michael C. McMillenI've always seen process of crafting as part of the thinking process. It really forms the gestation of the work. I'll get an idea; I want to express this idea, sometimes I'll start it, but during the process of making the object - if it's an object or a painting - it changes. It never goes in a linear progression from A to Zed. It's always this kind of circuitous, stumbling, groping in the dark kind of process of evolving.
Michael C. McMillenI think good art has good concept behind it. Nothing can always articulate fully the way a Ph.D. candidate can articulate their thesis, because artists work with a combination of intuition and intellect blended together and out comes whatever they produce. So it's a blend of kind of a sensual response to material and an intellectual response to idea, maybe a blend of the two.
Michael C. McMillenOne of the ongoing themes of my work of interest has been the idea of the inevitably of disintegration, of entropy, constant flux of matter, and so I've done a number of pieces that have explored those ideas. In the decline, there's a lot of beauty.
Michael C. McMillenOne big disturbance, I think, between L.A. and New York is that New York is so condensed and together that it's very hard to be private there. There's a lot of constant interchange, people know what you're doing all the time. Here in L.A. it's the opposite, it's very spread out, unless you make a conscious effort to go someplace and look at something, you don't see it and we hear about it. So in that sense, it's a city where you can be very anonymous if you want to be, or even if you don't want to be.
Michael C. McMillen