Mirena Rhee's blog — Mirena Rhee

http://www.mapmap.ch/index.php/sound/for-friends-this-winter/

Doing commercial work is not .... the same as fine art work. Commercial work is a synthesis. And a lot of it gets done by talking - I used to get in touch with around 20 people when creating art commercially for a specific project - and at the end the work gets evaluated by another set of at least 20 people. While it is not necessarily a committee work as it is done in ad agencies, the work I used to do at Lucasfilm, you could say, was my best shot synthesis on a visual theme. Being "good" commercially meant you were a good listener and interpreter of a cloud of ideas. Sorry ... a very receptive 3d printer.

Fine art work is, on the other hand, genesis. A brand new world is created where you generate an idea, you are the primary vehicle, the messiah, the creator, the motivator, the heavy lifter, the ceo and the heart of the operation. But art is rarely created in isolation and completely without an agenda. Michelangelo worked for the Pope. Renaissance artists worked for the Medici. I personally like when artwork generates several outcomes. winter diagrams were just simple drawings of hands before they were strung together in an animation, then they became a three-dimensional sculpture in Winter - the dress. They will continue to push their way into various forms I am sure, some of the stills from the animations are to become a painting , or several stills combined and interlocked into one painting - I haven't decided yet.

I grew up as an artist creating work commercially and have a lot of the same habits. I love bouncing ideas and talking about work - others' or mine or old masters or new ones.. love dissecting and putting out feelers for the impressions any work leaves on people.

I remember vividly the winter in Brooklyn when I created the animations - although Hand Painted ocean was originally conceived in Manhattan. I came across Marcus Fischer's album For Friends This Winter and decided to use the music for the animations, also feeling that the animations themselves and how I wanted to do them were in large part a synthesis, inspired by many conversations and then a first(i think) visit to one of my favorite museums in New York. I remember one particular evening with a lot of New-Agey talk, with a girl that was doing New-Agey type massage and having really strange conversations about how she feels her patients with her hands. True? I don't know but deepened my obsession with hands.

Also my friend Rob List had earlier come to my Harlem room and did an impromptu performance which i for some reason filmed, and almost set me on a course:

https://vimeo.com/12269715

The seed for Hand painted ocean and fruit:

Hand Painted Ocean and Fruit from mirena rhee on Vimeo.

I keep the same shifty perspective for my installations where i do value people's unscripted intrusions and impromptu contributions more than my attempts to control a visual outcome.