I want to create objects that will stimulate the viewer in ways that I am stimulated by these objects. Now that's an ideal situation and the artist has no control over what his audience is going to think, but they can try to communicate some quality, some poetry through the work and just hope that the viewer has something in the vicinity of a similar experience.
Michael C. McMillenThe idea of getting old and dying, falling apart, does not sound fun at all to me, but it's an observation that I'm sure I'm not the first one to express. There're thousands of year of history attest to the same thing. Maybe it's the way I'm personally dealing with that inevitable transition. So I'm making metaphors out of the work possibly to think about that and try to get comfortable with the idea.
Michael C. McMillenBeing an artist is two things. You accumulate experience and time, and if you have something that's interesting, you have to be persistent. That's very important. There's nothing instant about it. It's a way of life, actually, where you choose to spend your life doing this activity called making art.
Michael C. McMillenThat's what I like about the idea of the aesthetic experience, the idea of both enjoying looking at works of art and how they kind of talk to you, and also the process of making art, getting back to that idea of the aesthetic experience of making art is very important, It's another way of thinking. Instead of just using your brain, you're using your hands to think with. They're different connections, the brain that comes through the fingertips as opposed that comes through the eyes and ears.
Michael C. McMillenI think we all have a tendency to have things. Even, I've noticed, people on the street collect things. So I think there's some kind of human impulse to collect. That's why they build museums, I guess.
Michael C. McMillenI think at one point, a whole new younger generation of critics come in and they're really aware of zeitgeist in their group, and the older artists tend to get forgotten as their critics retire and do other things or stop paying attention. So there's a factor of aging that I think is to be considered, too. As a middle-aged artist, you kind of get put on a shelf for the young ones.
Michael C. McMillenI don't refer to myself as a sculptor, but I use the word "visual artist." I prefer that, because that leaves the medium wide open because I've got ideas for film and video, things I haven't had the time yet to really fully explore, probably never will, but I want to be able to have that option open to kind of do that.
Michael C. McMillen