Text for PCG loans from AJ Shields
In an interview with Jill Brienza, & Bill North,16 January 1999
Roger Smith Hotel, New York City

In my first couple of years in New York, I wasn’t really productive. I wasn’t making a lot of work. I was doing a lot of searching, looking around. I met a lot of artists. In those days, we met the artists, hung out in their studios, got drunk with them and met them in various (other) ways. It became fairly evident to me that these were fairly ordinary people, with similar histories to my own, who were here because they were drawn to that cultural center of activity (and) center of influence. But I had to find my own niche. It became fairly evident to me that the people I revered the most, that I had most interest in, were individual artists who did individual things. Suddenly I was sitting next to them. I was talking to them and rubbing elbows with the people I only knew from reproductions, and it gave me heart. It gave me purpose. I could actually do it myself. It gave me direction, and my goal then become one of individuality, because each of these people that I had loved first for the image, I mean I had interest in their art production from photographic reproduction in a magazine distributed all over the country, but when I finally found that they were real people in a real situation, I felt that I could also be in that place. So, I had to find my own niche, my own thing so to speak and that was the sort of general feeling around the art community in New York at that time. You had to find your own special expression in order to have a word in the big picture.