When I look at my bookshelf, I don’t just see books—I see a conversation unfolding among the Artists and authors, the Artists and me, and sometimes an imagined conversation between the Artists and each other! From the Shelf Excerpt above, I wonder what would Haegue Yang, Richard Tuttle, and Diana Thater talk about? For sure precision would be included as each deeply values an unflinching commitment to their practice and the power of their work generates from this quiet and deeply charged place. The conversation could be about materiality and light, and also about memory, visibility, and the small shifts that can change how we feel.
Haegue Yang’s work often brings together the industrial and the handmade, the historical and the personal. One of my favorite pieces is on the shelf itself: a can of Spam wrapped in a gold cozzie crocheted by the artist herself. It’s both absurd and poignant. A mass-produced object, once a wartime staple, transformed into something fragile, beautiful, even sacred. It speaks to survival, migration, labor—yet it’s also just a can of Spam wearing a handmade coat. That paradox is where Haegue’s brilliance lies.
Richard Tuttle, too, is a master of humble gestures. His work is never about grand statements—it’s about intimacy, sensitivity, and the radical potential of the barely there. His book on my shelf feels like a whisper in paper form. Every fold, color, and fiber becomes a meditation on how little it takes to make something feel big.
Diana Thater expands the frame. Her immersive video installations surround us with light and time, with nonhuman perspectives and impossible colors. Her book radiates the feeling of her work: spacious, intelligent, and attuned to the natural world, especially animals and ecosystems that so often go unseen. She reminds us that beauty can be both emotional and ethical.
Together, these artists—and these books—ask us to look again. To see more in the everyday. To feel something in the quietest materials. They invite a kind of presence that, to me, is what the best art—and the best conversations—are all about.
Maybe the invitation here is to look at your own bookshelf, or the objects in your home, with new eyes. What conversations are already happening among them? Which pieces carry memory, contradiction, or quiet transformation? Sometimes the most ordinary things—a book, a sculpture, a wrapped can of Spam—can hold the most meaning. All we have to do is notice. Art doesn’t have to live on a museum wall; it can live with you, speak to you, and remind you to see your world—and yourself—a little differently.
