{"product_id":"how-it-feels-to-be-alive-encounters-with-art-and-our-selves-1","title":"How It Feels to Be Alive: Encounters with Art and Our Selves","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA vital testament to how art makes us who we are--and offers new ways of seeing our world and our lives. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBarbara Kruger once defined art as the ability \"to show and tell, through a kind of eloquent shorthand, how it feels to be alive.\" Testing that claim, Megan O'Grady takes us on a journey to explore art's intimate effects and how it might help us find clarity in an uncertain world. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhen O'Grady was a teenager, she saw a photograph in a museum that changed her life. When she was at the end of an early marriage, art stoked new ways of thinking about connection and transformation. When she was a new parent, it guided her to confront vulnerability and shame. Whether she was seeking a home or contending with crises personal, political, and ecological, art was a critical lifeline, a source of beauty, solace, and provocation. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLooking closely at five artworks and the context in which each was made--and often drawing on personal conversations with the artists--O'Grady traces the works' rippling impacts, suggesting sometimes unexpected lineages and genres. How does art expand and redirect our imagination and attention? When bottom-line or nihilistic thinking dominates our public sphere, what meanings and alternatives does art offer? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA vital call to engage deeply, to see in new ways, and to consider all that we take for granted, \u003ci\u003eHow It Feels to Be Alive\u003c\/i\u003e inspires and exhorts, providing a template for thinking through the knottiest problems in our culture and our selves, and the connections between the two.","brand":"Megan O'Grady","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47604575895788,"sku":"9781250468789","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0684\/1791\/3068\/files\/9781250468789.jpg?v=1778099893","url":"https:\/\/intl.allstora.com\/products\/how-it-feels-to-be-alive-encounters-with-art-and-our-selves-1","provider":"Allstora","version":"1.0","type":"link"}