Hung Liu, Artist and Teacher

If I can paint flowers to look like flowers, and I can copy photographs perfectly, what does that mean? It gets old, and it’s not exciting. So I have to find a way to make myself surprised by what I do. Like Duke Ellington always said, “The best piece is tomorrow’s work.”

I bring my students here because there’s always something going on, always something new. In the David Ireland show, there was one piece he’d made from debris left over from another show, like a construction site, from big natural chaos or something. It made you think about what came before—whether it was junk, whether it was art. Another time there were artists of all kinds—including a famous chef—collaborating on quilts. That was out-of-the-box thinking!

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