The Way You Think

“There is a really rich history of artists who work in ways that are not necessarily object-oriented,” she [Susan O’Malley] says. “Grad school made me think of work a lot more expansively: that work isn't toiling away in your studio, but that it is connected to the way you think, the way you live your everyday life, a way of seeing and observing — that things are weird. I always feel that I am doing things, and that what I am doing doesn't really fit anywhere. … Describing it as artistic practice is the closest I can come.”

Here I am again with another lead to an artist from Lea Feinstein, directing me to an article about Susan O’Malley, a conceptual artist at work and at play.

“But the fun in her work belies the underlying deeper message: Art can change the world if it can show us how to reframe what we see (and accept too easily) as the truth. Her work is the art of engagement with people — sometimes called “social practice” in the art world. “We need our audience to make our work become what it is,” she says.”

I think of Octavia Butler and adrienne maree brown (Emergent Strategy, a book I list under the Field Guide) as part of a vein I am following, an invitation to re-consider what is offered as a given, to test what happens when we push backward against that, when we move closer to the origin.