Windows to the mind
Born in Dublin, Ireland, Paul O'Malley is a Queens-based photographer. His work reflects how he sees the world through his personality and mental makeup, grappling with the balance between isolation and connection. Paul searches for comfort in discomfort, questioning how he fits into a world that often demands so much from us.
His trio of photographs, installed in the gallery in October and November 2024, invited the question:
How are you nurturing your most valuable possession—your mind?
Here’s how our neighbors responded:
“I'm in THERAPY!”
“By being positive, being empathetic and loving the people around me.”
“By learning something new every day!”
“At this time in my life, I nurture my mind by giving it a break. It is so active helping a toddler grow, that when I am not needed, I simply sit, tv off, music off, and just be, in the silence.”
“Daily meditation.”
“I'm finally making time and space in my life to get back to reading books and it feels great.”
“I open myself to new experiences and revisit old ones. This gives my mind plenty to learn from and reflect upon.”
“A warm soft charge is felt when I learn a new word in another language. And the soft excitement sustains as I converse with a fellow human being in their language. It’s a feeling of universality, of growing, learning, getting along: a feeling that everything is going to be all right.”
“I nurture my mind regularly with good books, dancing to playlists of songs which invoke warm memories, and going for exploratory neighborhood walks with my dog and appreciating nature.”
“I'm a therapist who works with a lot of traumatized folks. Now more than ever I've been reflecting on the way that I need to tend to the garden of my interior world the way I encourage others to do. Every beautiful moment no matter how small I try to give space to. The other day I found some orchids being thrown away but otherwise looking healthy which in itself was a tiny miracle but the gem of that moment was going into a bodega and asking if I could purchase a bag to carry the precious plants home. He went above and beyond helping me to lovingly pack each plant up. Those moments of kindness are each a tiny miracle and when you sit with them or share them with someone else you allow it to bring peace to a mind that so easily can become cluttered with the troubles of everyday.”
Our neighbor Gayle Toonkel—a daily meditator—was the lucky winner of “Windows to the mind.” Here’s a picture of her with Paul O’Malley—congratulations, Gayle!
