Look in Time magazine this week for an article about Martin Puryear shown in the photo at left. Martin says, "I was more interested in making things than in making images of things." So he takes a hands-on role in all his work. As stated in Time:

And he means making in a way that a lot of artists no longer do. Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst don't lay a finger on much of what bears their names. They hand their ideas over to studio assistants and skilled fabricators. Puryear is his own skilled fabricator; he has brought carpentry, joinery and boatbuilding techniques into his art. He knows that's retro virtue. "To get your hands dirty building something?" He asks. "You can buy that nowadays. So a lot of artists buy a very high level of craft from somebody else. They don't put themselves in the place of the maker. I persist in that practice. It is a rich place to be."

Art critic Robert Hughes has called Martin Puryear the foremost American Artist. Could it be that the hands might have something to do with that?