Quotes by Martin Puryear

• I realized it wasn't necessary to work in the traditional methods of carving and casting.
• At a certain point, I just put the building and the art impulse together. I decided that building was a legitimate way to make sculpture.
• I felt it was part of the spirit of the whole program to do more than simply make an object.
• The work is flowing from an inner knowing of how things really are.
• The site I landed on feels much more isolated than it really is; it's almost magical. Within its limited radius, there was a whole range of the local ecology.
• The fire was followed by a period of grieving and then by an incredible lightness, freedom, and mobility.
• I was never interested in making cool, distilled, pure objects.
• I think of moving as a kind of saving grace.
• Although idea and form are ultimately paramount in my work, so too are chance, accident, and rawness.