Making good art is good storytelling, said the featured artist during her presentation on the last day of her exhibit in the Visual Arts Center from July 19 to Sept. 5.

“I think what makes good art is a good story,” artist Kelley O’Brien said to aspiring art students during the presentation. O’Brien comes from Greensboro, North Carolina.

Some of O’Brien’s works that were shown include: “American at Work,” “Lucy Walks,” “Liberty is the Freedom to do Exactly What You’ve Been Doing” and, the main work of the evening, Residence Time.

Residence Time is a piece inspired by numerous 1,4-dioxane leaks. The first happened in the Cape Fear River Basin in 2014, and the company responsible for the spill has not been held accountable. 

1,4-dioxane is a possible carcinogen and toxic chemical that can cause nasal, abdominal, kidney and liver problems when exposed to it in high levels, according to the CDC. 

The exhibition was described by O’Brien as an investigation of how “the city is complicit in violence, both against humans and the environment, in support of the industries that fund (Greensboro).” 

When speaking about her inspiration for Residence Time, she said, “I was really interested in thinking about the ways that our city has engaged in state sanctioned violence… and also how this is an issue that goes under the radar.” 

In the exhibition, a perfume bottle of 1,4-dioxane was displayed in a glass box as the center of the gallery when walking into the showroom.

The exhibit also showed stills of rivers affected by these spills layered and printed onto translucent paper. 

When speaking about her thought process for this piece, O’Brien said, “I was really interested in the way of the paper itself starting to become obscure images and how that kind of hints towards the obscurity of these ideas by the government.” 

Another work shown in the exhibit featured industrial filter socks which are mainly used for filtering out water. The inspiration for this work was finding these filter socks in North Buffalo Creek in Greensboro. O’Brien described the industrial filter socks as a metaphor for the desertion of local newspapers. 

“I think this is part of the issue that happens a lot when you’re thinking about local concerns or local actions.” she said. “It’s really hard to access local news in your communities, especially since we’ve lost a lot of local newspapers. I thought that it was a nice image to show with this.”

Another work shown was a panel of water that moves at certain moments. O’Brien described the piece as, “A soundscape of deep vibrations reverberates ominously through the space and our bodies.” 

Jordan Ooten can be contacted at [email protected]