Installation artist Judy O’Shea works with the volume and history of a space to engage the visitor not only with her objects, but also with the venue and other observers. She will often create an atmosphere of discovery, leading you through layers of textures and transparency to a new environment within the original site.
In Permutations, the viewer starts the journey by navigating through a hanging, ethereal deck of hand-cast paper cards. The 52 cards mutate from white to blue to brown until you reach a salle d’attente (waiting room) of baroque costume elements among backlit tapestries. Like a scene from Moliere’s satires, the visitor must contemplate the message and the meaning, before returning back through the maze.
Based in Northern California, O’Shea has developed installations in Europe and California for over 25 years. She ran an artist-in-residency program in France for seventeen years, working with American and international artists. She has shown at Works in San Jose, the San Francisco Center for the Book, and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Her book, Water Paper Stone: Letters from a Mill in France tells the story of her artistic journey in France.
