One observation, or at least my interpretation of the observation, sticks in my head. She compared bottom up thinking and top down thinking, observing that abstract thinkers can lose sight of the ground. This strikes me as very relevant to conceptual art, which can easily get lost in its own airy logic, loops and associations, while losing sight of materials and play with materials and forms that ground art.
I also particular enjoy her focus on the perceptual lens through which we see. She talked about getting into cow chutes to see what the cows saw. As artists, we have to have an awareness of what viewers may see (on a ground level) and may think (on a bigger picture level), and how words and pictures translate through different lens. It's always a translation -- we are never another person -- but awareness can foster communications in which less is seemingly lost in the translation.
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