When I graduated from high school, this is in Los Angeles, I was very interested in taking a trip to Mexico to see the archeological sites. So three other people and myself drove down there.

One of the reasons that I went to Mexico aside from the Maya and the pre-Columbian aspect of it was that I wanted to work with [Diego] Rivera, which I did, on a mural that he was painting at the time. But at some point I realized that I wasn't going to be a political artist, it just wasn't in my repertoire.

I did live in Paris for three years and I prefer New York.

The cultures of the Americas were extremely complex and interesting, with their own languages and observatories to watch the stars. The more you know about them the more you realize how extremely impressive they were. Bloodthirsty, though, I think they were as well.

I veer more toward the philosophical and the poetic than I do toward the alert and angry.

In fact, in the history of a lot of cultures there is a theater. For example, there are the theaters in Java, [Indonesia] and of that area where they use puppets and they have backgrounds and shadows.

I never made "feminist art," and if I did it was not deliberate.