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What advice would your 80-year-old self give you?
That´s the question social-practice artist Susan O´Malley (1976-2015) asked more than a hundred ordinary people of every age, and from every walk of life. O´Malley collected their responses-words of encouragement, truth, and generosity-and transformed them into the distinctive text-based images gathered in this book. Together, they reveal the wisdom we all hold inside ourselves right now.

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Susan O´Malley (1976-2015) was an internationally exhibited artist and curator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. As curator and print center director at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art she worked with hundreds of artists and organised more than fifty exhibitions and public programmes. As an artist she made work that brings a sense of interconnectedness into our lives, from conversations with strangers to installations in public places. The impact of her work has travelled far and wide. O´Malley´s artwork has been exhibited in public projects across the United States-San Francisco, New York, Nashville-and around the globe in the United Kingdom, Poland and Denmark. She exhibited at alternative spaces and cultural institutions including, in California, the Montalvo Art Center, Kala Art Institute,/i. and Palo Alto Art Center, as well as the Contemporary Art Museum (Houston, TX), and the Parthenon Museum (Nashville, TN). Her installation Finding Your Center, a collaboration with Leah Rosenberg, was recently featured in Bay Area Now 7 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and her project A Healing Walk is permanently installed at Villa Montalvo. The powerful optimism of her work lives on.

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