Growing up in Chicago, there was a very particular type of home that would display the black Jesus figure. It wasn't a radical home. You wouldn't find these in a Black Panther house. There's still a strong allegiance to Christianity.

I have an investment in the signifying aspects of the material as well as an understanding of antecedent bodies of work. That informs the way I make marks and make decisions.

When I was young, I remember feeling a real thirst for opportunities around the arts, for learning about how artists function and how institutions work.

I'd begun to collect things that were lying in piles on the floor of my studio. I had run out of space, and I started to build shelves. I turned around one day and realized that that was the vehicle for carrying so many of the things that I was looking at and talking about, so they went from the walls to the works.

I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.

My sculpture is very personal; for years my subjects were family and close, close friends.

My family is my number one priority.

At one time, there was a stereotype that your Girl Scout leader was the mother of a Brownie, but increasingly, we are having young businesswomen and professional women who are not mothers but care about children.