Four months later, I was in a pool and I had no idea what I was doing. I had an idea, a dress, and a lot of determination, but I had no idea how to make it happen.

You have that weird tension of puffiness in your face. If you have air in your lungs you're holding that air and your face shows it, but if you let it all out, you have this soft, very receptive face, which is the kind of face I'm looking for.

I figured it was water based, it was chance based, it was time based, it was my kind of thing. It's rhapsodically beautiful.

I go to the water with a good idea and the water gives it back to me great. Half of what is totally magic in my work isn't me, and I don't say that out of humility, it's just that the water itself is this extraordinary, lyrical, poetic force and when you're working with it, it's there, it's your partner in creativity and it knows more than I do, I swear.

In my life as an artist, I follow what I call my 'inner directive' because you can never predict what the world is going to do. You can never predict how people are going to respond to what you do. What I have to do is just trust what's sending me down a road of creative inquiry is important to me and somehow that will make it into a piece of work that is important to others.

He was really taken aback by it. It's something small, but it's the recognition that means the most.