My life is an art. I have given it a form that I may understand what is happening in the world.
Quoted by Michael Hitzig, in Journal-News,
September 1976
There is a great deal to know, about everything.
One should be cautious about saying one knows something to be the case before one really does …
There is the story of a young disciple who goes to the master and asks to be made a
master himself. The master asks him certain questions, which the young man answers, and the master says that the young man is not yet ready. Years pass. The young man returns. The master asks him the same questions. The young man gives the same answers. "Now you are ready."
What is art? Humanity's stand toward the world. Its attitude, relationship, idea, aspiration, understanding.
In art, perception TAKES FORM. Is created in flesh, as it were: in pigment, dust, movements of the body, chunks of marble, threads, sounds.. .
The form does not constitute an "intention" on the part of the artist. It is closer to something like a "disclosure", a revelation to the physical man of his inner experiences.
It is an expression—an image—which is a whole thing, signifying itself. This form carries its life within it, as a man does. It is a created perception of REALITY, an act of the IMAGINATION, expressing its knowledge of the physical and spiritual universe.
"Music", someone said, "is the organized revelation of the inherent intelligence of sound." I feel this could be applied to my work: TO REVEAL THE INHERENT INTELLIGENCE IN THINGS. Everything has mind, spirit, intelligence; I honor these in everything and do not separate myself as a human being from them. All the forces that are working in nature are alive. WE make the distinction between something that is seemingly rigid (a stone) and something that seemingly moves (a person).
The "stand" toward reality exhibited by today's art as compared with that of former epochs shows man's changing experience of the material world.
To take a stand that will permit nature to be revealed. That will accept what is real. If it is a mystery, then a mystery. Only to point the way toward the thing. Not to confuse the pointing finger with the way:
. . . not a description
. . . not an intellectual concept
. . . not its function to teach,
to give pleasure,
. . . not to be judged as beautiful or not beautiful;
not if somebody likes it or doesn't like it.
Esthetic criteria are not the Way. IF WE CAN KEEP THE ALIVENESS OF TAKING THE EXPERIENCES OF WHAT IT IS, THE GOODNESS AND BADNESS WILL TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES.
It is very difficult to share another person's "reality". It is very difficult "to love", "to identify with", to transcend the self and to open one's eyes, one's ears, one's mind, one's heart to the strange. It is this kind of openness that is required of the human being if he is to live in reality. It is not necessary nor even possible to understand everything with one's rational faculties. But it is necessary and possible to make life and its form the kind of contact that is as natural as breathing.
To the question, "What is art?" a young Japanese artist replied, "Art is love"
The sky is blue, the mountains are green, and the grass is growing everywhere.
Notes on Art, in IT IS,
1960
Art is not separate from life; therefore its purpose is not to produce beauty, but to produce meaning, and everything in life is meaningful.
around 1957
[In the painting From Seed to Sky] I used a rubbing of a double tree trunk for the seed, which seems to be splitting like an.arnoeba. From there the painting is a journey in space and color. The only wall long enough to hold it while I was painting was the side of a police station.
One of the policemen looked at it and said "That's like flying all the way across the United States." When I'm asked why it's such a long painting, I answer, "It was a long journey."
around 1957
I believe that there's never anything that doesn't change. The most constant, the most permanent thing in life is change. You have to accept this fact that everything changes.. . The public cannot accept that art expresses that change all the time ... Because it always expresses the moment ... Art is an understanding of man's reality which always changes.
Quoted by Karen S. Chambers, in Craft International
Spring 1984
My definition of art is humanity's giving form to their understanding of the reality of the moment. And the understanding is not an intellectual understanding. It's an insight. And if you are an intellectual, your intellect works, but art is not a communication; it is not an explanation. It's not an intellectual thing at all, but a very very deep insight and understanding of what is real at the moment. And that is why it changes, because the moment changes and the understanding of the reality changes. And I certainly believe that humanity is the history of the human. Humanity is much more deeply expressed in art than in who was the king and what kind of wars were being fought. It is not quite as interesting and revealing as if we were really to understand and really exploit the world of art.
Interview with Donna Marxer,
March 4, 1989
Nature is evoked as well by non-nature. In my communion with nature, nature is 'incidental. The communion is essential.
Quoted by M.C. Richards, in Craft Horizons
March-April 1956
I think we are living in a most fantastic era. Whether humanity is going to its suicide, I do not know; but we are living in a most fantastic era, most fantastic.
Quoted by Karen S. Chambers, in Craft International
Spring 1984
Sari Dienes is that rare combination - artist, designer, craftsman - a person of vision who bows how to construct and how to plan. She uses paint, ink, wood, clay, concrete, metal, glass, fiber, fabric, and grass with equal zest and originality. Working architecturally, she has recently designed and executed walls of glass and concrete and of wood mosaic for her new house in Stony Point, New York.
Her bottle sculptures rehearse for us that radiant void of which the sages speak. Forms press forth invisibly. The glass captures their reflections, and we think we see multiple dwellings for a genie, quiet seas for small ships, messengers from floating islands of light and color.
M.C. Richards, Craft Horizons
September-October 1962
[Sari] Dienes is interested in the world around her and she incorporates her personal environment into her work. This activity establishes a symbiotic relationship between mundane materials and aesthetic qualities. A column of coffee filters is given a totem-like dignity; ceramic kiln temperature cones are used like animal teeth in a magic breastplate; a city pavement becomes an intricate, organic, spontaneous design.
Judith Van Baron, Arts
January 1974