Too many of us seem far too fond of narratives of our powerlessness, maybe because powerlessness lets us off the hook... But we don't need everyone on board; we don't need one magic person in office; we need ourselves. To act. It's the wind, not the weathervanes.

It's all about a war of social impulses and beliefs that is as powerful in its way as a big hurricane.

I grew up with landscape as a recourse, with the possibility of exiting the horizontal realm of social relations for a vertical alignment with earth and sky, matter and spirit. Vast open spaces speak best to this craving, the spaces I myself first found in the desert and then in the western grasslands.

I don't think my work has to be loved by everyone, and it's loved by enough people that I'm grateful and able to keep going.

A contrarian at heart, I am often guided by what I disagree with and don't want.

Growing up north of San Francisco, I immersed myself in the local landscape and in books about Native Americans, cowboys, and pioneers that seemed to ground me in it, but to pursue culture in those days meant being spun around until dizzy and then pushed east.

There was an assumption that aerial bombing of civilians in World War II would cause fragile, working-class people to basically have nervous breakdowns and it would paralyze the state. That was the logic of aerial bombing. In fact, it doesn't happen at all, but the logic behind aerial bombing has never stopped, even though it never demoralizes, terrorizes, or paralyzes a population.