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12/16/1993 14:44 2124313252 STEINBAUM KRAUSS PAGE 16

but to think of structure and culture. I have to combine the two methods of thinking about them mentally. It doesn't take away from the structure as poetry. It just means I'm being more comprehensive. In other words, Miss Mary had a yard. I didn't include the yard. She had a garden. I didn't include that. I just showed you her house with the copper roof. But the fence pieces. I actually have a fence with a house.

EF: Why aren't you leaving the fences to the viewer's imagination as you did with the trees?
BB: I think the fence is significant. Fences can be wooden or rocks.
They can be a path. It's about separation and inclusion.

EF: What's inside and what's outside?
BB: And who decides what's inside an what's outside. I don't think I've explored the possibilities of any of that yet. This is just the beginning of something and I don't know what. 

EF: There's no reference to death in your works. Is that intentional?
BB: The early black series were about death. I began to to realize that I have been exposed to so many different kinds of things in life that are unusual, and that doesn't exclude death. But I want to concentrate on presenting something others might overlook. I want to give people who can neither read nor write but made all measurements and built their own barns and shacks a different way of looking at themselves. My fascination is with buildings and ruins; but there s more fascination with life and its positive aspects.

Eleanor Flomenhaft, Guest Curator

Note: This is excerpted from three interviews, the first in 1989 at the Bernice Steinbaum gallery New York, and the other two in 1993 at the artist's home in Athens Georgia.

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