Cornelia Parker is already a smash hit in her native Britain. Her current show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston is the first real survey of her work in America, our first chance to take a good look at her.

The Harvard Crimson: Much of your work seems very scientific--calculating entropy, defying gravity. How much does science influence your work?

Cornelia Parker: Quite a lot, I think. Over the last few years, I've spent more time reading about science than I have about art. It's very intimidating, though, for an artist to enter the science world because they're doing things for very different reasons. Very often I'm trying to do things that a scientist might do, like I'm trying to send a meteorite back into space.

THC: What artists have influenced you the most?

CP: There are loads of people who I love: Jan van Eyck, Uccello, Piero della Francesca. They're usually painters rather than sculptors, curiously enough. But, I suppose, writers possibly more. I think literature is very inspiring to me.

THC: Such as?

CP: Have you heard of Wilkie Collins? He was a contemporary of Charles Dickens, he was sort of a melodrama man. He wrote these amazing cliffhanger novels, like The Woman in White and Moonstone, which I think are brilliant. I don't think they're necessarily that influential but they really fire up the imagination.

THC: Did you read a lot as a child?

CP: Yes, I did. I lived in the countryside, miles from anywhere. There weren't many children around to play with, so I spent a lot of time either reading or kind of making up. I lived on a small farm and much of my childhood was spent working--manual labor--stringing up tomato plants, milking the cows by hand, mucking up the pigs, planting vegetables, raking hay, very ephemeral, process-oriented things. Then I'd sneak off into the attic to read. I don't think I went to an art gallery until I was about sixteen. So I wasn't very aware of art at all; I was very much literature-based.