inspiration or admiration?

I think that people in the art crowd have confused inspiration with admiration.

All too often, I hear the question "Who is your work inspired by?"

To this, I feel that I never have an adequate response.  I "um...", and "uh...", and try to name drop, because I never feel that I am Inspired by the who that is expected of me.


What I am inspired by is architecture, furniture, machines- minuscule to enormous, and so many other things that I see as beautiful.
Does that mean that I should I find out the name of every architect who designed buildings that I love to look at?  If that is the case, I should know the names of all of the people who constructed those buildings, or who put the trim around the windows, and the blacksmiths who hand-forged each piece of iron for the gates surrounding them.
Or maybe I should find out the name of the person who designed each Caterpillar truck, or airplane and train that I look at.  Except, my hunch is that they were all designed by teams of people, mostly engineers.
These are the things that I see that inspire me to Make.

Who I Admire?  Now that is a question I can start to answer. I like Scandinavian and German designers, especially when it comes to jewelry and glass.  For ceramics, I'm a sucker for things that look like Gwyn Hanssen Pigott's, or Karen Swyler's work.
I like the work done by MC Escher, and Charles Mackintosh, Art Deco, Art Nouveau and the Arts&Crafts movement. Though I keep realizing that picking one person to admire is a challenge, I suppose I like to lump them all into a group or category.

Just because I admire someone's work, does not mean that I want to make work like them.  (But maybe I do, and maybe I already have...)