"How Do I know that they're there?"

"To be making art is a way of pleasing myself by being with myself and paying attention to myself. It's a way of satisfying others and getting in touch with others, by being with myself and paying attention to myself, and somehow knowing in the back of my head that others are there, that others are present as part of the medium that I'm working with. How do I know that they're there? I know that they're there because I am making a space for them to exist with what I'm doing."

----Steve Benson, “Careers in the Arts” Transcript of a talk at 80 Langton Street, San Francisco, 1978.