One must be entirely sensitive to the structure of the material that one is handling. One must yield to it in tiny details of execution, perhaps the handling of the surface or grain, and one must master it as a whole.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If the material is challenging, it forces you to challenge yourself when handling it.
With a father who is a fabulous craftsman, I was raised with the fundamental belief that it is only when you personally work with a material with your hands, that you come to understand its true nature, its characteristics, its attributes, and I think - very importantly - its potential.
On the one hand, there are individual actions such as throwing, pushing, touching, rubbing. It is these individual actions that give rise most of the time to abstraction from objects.
You begin with the possibilities of the material.
Each material has its specific characteristics which we must understand if we want to use it. This is no less true of steel and concrete.
Make the workmanship surpass the materials.
I think the sensitivity that you need to create certain things sometimes would spill over into things that shouldn't have bothered me.
With rare exceptions, I respond most to painting that cuts across grain rather than following it. I think the artist here can get in touch with that grain rather than simply feel its flow. And he really can't cut right across it anyway.
Unless we understand a certain material - metal or resin and plastic - understanding the processes that turn it from ore, for example - we can never develop and define form that's appropriate.
It is most necessary to avoid rusticity in any way, whether in material, design, or execution.