These kids could really draw. I mean there were some really talented students down there. And when I saw how well they could draw, I was greatly intimidated by it. I thought, “Well, I don’t belong here. I’m not really an artist. I just got in here by mistake, and maybe I shouldn’t stay.”
But then I had a 3-D class, which is studying the rudimentary materials and approaches to making sculpture – three-dimensional design. That drew on skills that I had in abundance from being a model maker and being able to make model boats and cars and trains. And when I started building things, making things with my hands, I realized, “Well, maybe this is the place for me. I can’t draw, but I can really make this stuff. I can really build things.”
And I had the ability to envision things three-dimensionally and make them with my hands, and I had a kind of a quick understanding of how to use tools and materials. I quickly became, you know, a pretty good sculptor. That’s not really the best way to describe it. I became comfortable with the challenges that I met there, and I was getting praise from my professors and from my fellow students.
I started feeling much more comfortable about being in art school – and so I stayed there. I stayed at University of Michigan for five years, just studying sculpture – at the exclusion of everything else because of those early experiences I’d had as a draftsman, as a drawer. The only thing I drew when I was in college – and this would include graduate school, the two years after that – the only thing that I drew were images of the sculptures that I would make. And I did that so that I would have a way of determining how much bronze I would need, how much clay I would need, how much wood I would need; and I would sketch these things out. But I never actually drew pictures in the sense that we use that word to describe illustrations. I never made a picture of figures doing something together. I mean I just only made drawings of things that I would make.
