exotic star, 3d pen and ink drawing /  by Mirena Rhee

exotic star, 3d drawing - pen and ink on hot press board - 11 x 8 in, 2021

Exotic Star, 3d pen and ink drawing, 2021, detail

My first completed work of the year, I am currently working on a really large painting and don't know what i am doing in a large format. This is an experiment I came up with on a whim, i generally don't like decorative stuff that are done without any meaning - but the 3rd dimension here has more than meaning - this is what all my work in any medium is about.

I just decided to see what i can just put together without too much "working it", it's basically two drawings, one wrapped around the other.

It could also be a lamp.

The most entertaining thing in the world is the NYC Subway Car /  by Mirena Rhee

I was riding a subway car and in it a guy was trying to breakdance.

I was watching the Viennese New Year's concert, which is really great. But all the dudes in the orchestra looked almost identical. The BBC narrator mentioned that the number of women in the orchestra has gone down from 12 to 7 this year. This is however not this kind of essay..

As the BBC narrator explained Vienna is seeped in tradition, Brahms, etc, the Viennese get their entertainment in the concert hall, at the ballet and other stately and princely establishments.

In New York everyone performs everywhere, especially on the subway. They have the audience there captive at least between two stations.

The NYC Subway Car is one of the most entertaining platforms ever, of course not now but when the city is in full swing getting on the L is an experience.

They're all kinds of cultural styles arising from the street culture of New York City, but the subway culture is a thing of it's own.

Every train line is a subculture, and all New Yorkers know of the trains and their peculiarities, and the crowd that rides in them.

I created several video/performance/animation/installation works based on my experience and observations on the subway called Ingredients of a Subway Car. At one time I planned constructing a subway car and inviting people to paint graffiti on it. I am yet to act on that project.

As it happens I have moved so many times in New York - I have lived on almost all trains and all neighborhoods.

The Greatest Experience of a Human Being is the Human Experience, as in experiencing another human being /  by Mirena Rhee

One of the greatest experiences of a human being is the experience of human culture. I have always wondered what is it about New York City that is magical, magical and irreplicable anywhere else.

Because the entire United States is pretty diverse if you pick the right spots, California is diverse also and I think California is a great candidate to be a cradle of great culture just like Athens or Rome. The problem of California is the car culture and the fact that human beings do not get a variety of other human experiences, every person is confined to their car and their only experience of other humans would be typically at work. The California work culture is great - something that's really abysmal on the East coast. 

However, having the experience of just going to Central Park and having on one bench person who probably works somewhere in a kitchen and then on the next bench over there someone who works in a boardroom and the fact that you could interact and have eye contact with each of these groups I think it's significant. I believe contact is significant to culture, the kind of people, the variety of people you may run into and interact with. California has a street culture, there's a lot of skating, there's Beach but this is not the kind of tumbling of rocks and pebbles that could be polishing these rocks into pebbles.

People in California ( or elsewhere ) are too confined to their cars and reflecting on my personal experience this was my major major gripe. I simply lacked the pressure of humanity around me which I really really appreciate in New York, and of course in many European cities. In New York people talk to strangers all the time I mean you can hardly get out on the street and somebody's going to say something to you. This is not my experience in Europe necessarily. Also, New York is incredibly diverse, you can be in a different country any couple of blocks. These two things work together to create a very thick human soup.

One of the problems with the media culture is the fact that they tell us that what is around us that the humans around us are not important and for some reason, we have to go online or whatever to look up some other human beings that we don't even know. I rather go on the subway and look at a car full of strangers and have first-person observations of their inner and outer lives rather than go online and look at some jerk do weird stuff that is just not truthful. Of course, weird stuff that's elaborate and well constructed like a hundred million dollar Hollywood movie works but that's an entirely different story and a totally different construct.

The human experience - as in experiencing other human beings is the greatest experience. And I'm reflecting on my own experiences in New York City and I believe that this is my greatest experience as an artist as well - experiencing other human beings, experiencing other human beings and their closeness not just as an artist but just as a human being, as a pedestrian in New York City, as , for example, a teacher or worker for the Census Bureau, and of course as a creator of installations. New York is really rich. Rich of The human experience.

I believe this is what infused the cultures of the Mediterranean like the culture of Athens, Florence Rome it was the culture of The human experience and the same thing with the culture in Amsterdam - it was the bouncing off of the mercantile culture of the people who went out on ships to explore the world and came back to the city.

In California, your human experience is stratified into work or shopping so it's fairly restricted to whatever you're doing. Leaving your house in New York City is like wondering into Narnia you never know who you going to run into. And they may change your life. I've had spontaneous conversations with people from all walks of life which is a specifically product of the way New York City operates. I've had conversations with Grandma's, I've had conversations with protesters, with spectators and participants in my art, with people who just run around Central Park, with people who just wander in New York City without a home I actually absolutely hate the word homeless, it somehow connotes human garbage when I think that all humans are gods but some of the gods may have fallen off to the wayside.

When I walk down the street and think of The human experience I think I experience the gods in people.

And Happy New Year 2021 !

People paint on Memory Replacement Election Day 2020 - Installation and Performance by American Artist Mirena Rhee created on November 3rd on Union Square in New York City.

The Greatest Story Ever Told - from the Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. /  by Mirena Rhee

There is a wonderful story in one of the Upanishads about the god Indra. Now, it happened at this time that a great monster had enclosed all the waters of the earth, so there was a terrible drought, and the world was in a very bad condition. It took Indra quite a while to realize that he had a box of thunderbolts and that all he had to do was drop a thunderbolt on the monster and blow him up. When he did that, the waters flowed, and the world was refreshed, and Indra said, "What a great boy am I."

So, thinking, "What a great boy am I," Indra goes up to the cosmic mountain, which is the central mountain of the world, and decides to build a palace worthy of such as he. The main carpenter of the gods goes to work on it, and in very quick order he gets the palace into pretty good condition.

But every time Indra comes to inspect it, he has bigger ideas about how splendid and grandiose the palace should be. Finally, the carpenter says, "My god, we are both immortal, and there is no end to his desires. I am caught for eternity." So he decides to go to Brahma, the creator god, and complain.

Brahma sits on a lotus, the symbol of divine energy and divine grace. The lotus grows from the navel of Vishnu, who is the sleeping god, whose dream is the universe. So the carpenter comes to the edge of the great lotus pond of the universe and tells his story to Brahma. Brahma says, "You go home. I will fix this up." Brahma gets off his lotus and kneels down to address sleeping Vishnu. Vishnu just makes a gesture and says something like, "Listen, fly, something is going to happen.”

Next morning, at the gate of the palace that is being built, there appears a beautiful blue-black boy with a lot of children around him, just admiring his beauty. The porter at the gate of the new palace goes running to Indra, and Indra says, "Well, bring in the boy.” The boy is brought in and Indra, the king god, sitting on his throne, says, “Young man, welcome. And what brings you to my palace?”

”Well," says the boy with a voice like thunder rolling on the horizon. “I have been told that you are building such a palace as no Indra before you ever built."

And Indra says, "Indras before me, young man-what are you talking about!"

The boy says, "Indras before you. I have seen them come and go, come and go. Just think, Vishnu sleeps in the cosmic Ocean, and the lotus of the universe grows from his navel. On the lotus sits Brahma, the creator. Brahma opens his eyes, and a world comes into being, governed by an Indra. Brahma closes his eyes, and a world goes out of being. The life of a Brahma is four hundred and thirty thousand years. When he dies, the lotus goes back, and another lotus is formed, and another Brahma. Then think of the galaxies beyond galaxies in infinite space, each a lotus, with a Brahma sitting on it, opening his eyes, closing his eyes. And Indras? There may be wise men in your court who would volunteer to count the drops of water in the oceans of the world or the grains of sand on the beaches, but no one would count those Brahmin, let alone those Indras."

While the boy is talking, an army of ants parades across the floor. The boy laughs when he sees them, and Indra's hair stands on end, and he says to the boy, "Why do you laugh?"

The boy answers, "Don't ask unless you are willing to be hurt." Indra says, "I ask. Teach." (That, by the way, is a good Oriental idea: you don't teach until you are asked. You don't force your mission down people's throats.)

And so the boy points to the ants and says, "Former Indras all. Through many lifetimes they rise from the lowest conditions to highest illumination And then they drop their thunderbolt on a monster, and they think, 'What a good boy am I.' And down they go again.

While the boy is talking, a crotchety old yogi comes into the palace with a banana leaf parasol. He is naked except for a loincloth, and on his chest is a little disk of hair, and half the hairs in the middle have all dropped out. The boy greets him and asks him just what Indra was about to ask. "Old man, what is your name? Where do you come from? Where is your family? Where is your house? And what is the meaning of this curious constellation of hair on your chest!"

"Well," says the old fella, "my name is Hairy. I don't have a house. Life is too short for that. I just have this parasol. I don't have a family. I just meditate on Vishnu's feet, and think of eternity, and how passing time is. You know, every time an Indra dies, a world disappears - these things just flash by like that. Every time an Indra dies, one hair drops out of this circle on my chest. Half the hairs are gone now. Pretty soon they will all be gone. Life is short. Why build a house?"

Then the two disappear. The boy was Vishnu, the Lord Protector, and the old yogi was Shiva, the creator and destroyer of the world, who had just come for the instruction of Indra, who is simply a god of history but thinks he is the whole show.

Indra is sitting there on the throne, and he is completely disillusioned, completely shot. He calls the carpenter and says, "I'm quitting the building of this palace. You are dismissed." So the carpenter got his intention. He is dismissed from the job, and there is no more home building going on. Indra decides to go out and be a yogi and just meditate on the lotus feet of Vishnu.

……….

(Eventually) Indra gives up his idea of going out and becoming a yogi and finds that, in life, he can represent the eternal as a symbol, you might say, of the Brahma.

So each of us is, in a way, the Indra of his own life. You can make a choice, either to throw it all off and go into the forest to meditate, or to stay in the world, both in the life of your job, which is the kingly job of politics and achievement, and in the love life…

Now, this is a very nice myth, it seems to me.

Merry Christmas from Rome /  by Mirena Rhee

Merry Christmas from Rome at the Saint Peter’s in the Vatican, with the greatest artist that ever lived Michelangelo Il Divino “The Divine” Buonarroti, and truly yours.

2020 /  by Mirena Rhee

2020 has been completely incredible in that, it may sound strange, but I'm glad, I got Covid early on - around the end of March - it really freed up the rest of my year so I could work and not be worried as much. Around April 20th I wrote the account of my Covid experience in my notebook and here it is completely unaltered, it's only commas and the occasional grammar thing here and there.

Some of you might know or of course, probably don't know - I'm estranged from my family, I talk to my dad occasionally but often that stops.

After I completed my lockdown experience I took a little time off from New York for about 20 days and then I came back to work for the Census Bureau, I knew that to finance all the work that's coming up and especially having to ask others to contribute I should be the one to contribute first. I also decided to give up alcohol at least for a few years until what I think is essential work gets done.

Anyway working for the Census Bureau was profitable but incredibly intense. One of the reasons I decided to do it is exactly because it was extremely intense the type of work which is almost like a door to door salesman but with quite a lot of personal questions that I was supposed to ask people of all walks of life.

I got a government-issued phone, government-issued hand sanitizer which smelled like brandy so when I used it I smelled like I had just gotten off a feast, and masks. I would get about 100 addresses a day loaded onto my government-issued phone and I would get up in the morning and start knocking on doors.

After a couple of months of this, I was a part of the SBE operation which is counting the homeless people at soup kitchens and also other places where people without a home tend to sleep overnight.

So it was the kind of thing where in the morning I would go and knock on doors at the $4 million condos in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, and then I would go into a tall building and go all the way up the elevator with nanotechnology buttons that is self-cleaning, accompanied by a company concierge and I will go up to the penthouses and knock on the doors of the 30 million dollar apartments. And the next day I would go to the New York housing authority and interview people in all kinds of situations, and then the next day I would be at the soup kitchen interviewing people standing in line.

After a couple of months of this, I was sent to rural Georgia, there for about 10 days I drove around and interviewed from the wealthiest neighborhoods to the most humble trailer parks. I remember almost every single person I met on this trip.

I have to say that I've had an action movie worth of experiences while working for the Census Bureau, I met insane circumstances in which people lived and every day I was reminded of how special it is to be a part of The human experience. We are very very fragile.

My story of Covid and The Lockdown in Manhattan


Today is April 20th. I am at the studio of a friend. I am near Hudson River Park in Manhattan. He is a good friend. He left for upstate New York March 21st. I have been alone at the studio ever since. I did a performance at the Armory Show March 8th. After that, the world started shutting down.

Strangely enough, except for the masks, the park feels almost normal.

On March 31st I became sick with the flu. On April 1st I was having trouble breathing. I decided to go to the emergency room. I packed a bag

 (I packed a bag as if I were going to be intubated and won't come back – Author’s Note from Aug 13 2020).

But before that, I looked up on Google an emergency room I can go to. I picked Mount Sinai Beth Israel near 17th Street and 1st avenue 

(at the time I thought that if I were to die better try it at the best hospital in town. The funny thing is that months later I met a nurse from Beth Israel during one of my installations in Central Park. She said that the main people at the hospital are business people but the doctors and nurses are great. I decided that if I ever get rich I will give a gift to the hospital right now I don't have anything, and I can't pay - Author’s Note from Aug 13 2020).

I started packing my bag around 6pm but because of worry and confusion couldn't leave until around 8pm.

I was also on Facebook messenger with my dad, and I was crying. My dad is 80 years old and around 6 thousand miles away and staying home. As I write this he has been home almost 40 days. 

(Author’s Note - as of August 13th he hasn't yet left home except to throw out the trash. Author’s Note - on Aug 17, today, is his birthday and he said he wanted to wait until after he is 82).

After I completed my performance on March 8th the world and New York city started shutting down. First they closed the Public Library. Then they closed the Apple Store. My regular haunts for high speed internet. I went to Starbucks and as I was sitting they started taking away the tables. Then they closed all Starbucks. Then they closed my gym.

At this point, I had decided to leave New York and ride out the storm at my grandparents’ house in Bulgaria, which I also converted to a studio.

My plane tickets were for March 27th. The week leading up to my flight they started shutting borders, airports, and grounding airlines. Both my airlines canceled my flights that week.

Leading up to the moment of going to the hospital I did not know what to think. In my mind, I was leaning towards a conspiracy. I forgot the conspiracy once I started having difficulty breathing. I still don't know what to think.

Once I found out I’d have to ride out in the studio of my friend, I decided to use my time to paint. I had been thinking of making giant hands paintings and started on that.

Once another friend recommended to me to try He Shou Wu, a Chinese herb. I found the He Shou Wu in my storage and brought it to the studio and started taking it.


He Shou Wu is not really a drug. I would describe its effect as anti-depression. But it doesn't make you in any way high. I actually dislike being high, I prefer my brain intact.

I started painting and felt okay up until the point of starting to come down with the flu and having difficulty breathing.


A few days prior I went to a friend's apartment to take a shower and maybe got the bug there.

Here at the studio if I were to stay overnight - it is illegal as it is a commercial space. And there is no shower. But I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible and only leave to get food. 

As it stands now I have been in virtual isolation for a month.

When I made my bag ready for the emergency room I left the building and started towards the hospital. The city was quiet and eerily empty. As I was walking a few homeless people approached me, and also there were a few people walking their dogs. I took the 14th street and no one was around.

As I was reflecting back on my experience I realized to what degree the feeling of the empty city, the scenes at the hospital, resembled all the Hollywood movies I had watched. As if all the Hollywood directors had gone to the future, came back, and made their movies.

As I was approaching the hospital I was full-on bawling. I saw the glowing sign on top of a tall building Mount Sinai Beth Israel.

There was a big sign pointing to the emergency room. In front of it, EMT’s were lowering a person from the ambulance. At the entrance of the emergency room, I was greeted by a man who directed me towards a tent. At the tent inside were people with full protective gear, just like in all the Hollywood movies you have seen. I was asked to put on a surgical mask and wash my hands at the hand sanitizing station. (Author’s Note - I kept the mask in a plastic bag as a memento) I still as of yesterday wear that mask whenever I go outside, although it has been 14 days since I recovered.

When I walked inside the tent, already masked and cleaned, they took my temperature and oxygen and asked me about my symptoms. I told them I feel unwell and have difficulty breathing. They told me my oxygen is okay and I should proceed inside the emergency room. I was directed inside and taken by a man deep in the bowels of the emergency room and was directed to sit on a chair in a room full of nursing staff. Everyone seemed masked, gloved, with goggles and protective gowns. Another man was waiting also one chair over.

 

Later on, turned out the man head pneumonia I heard the doctor say. To my shame when the nurses started asking me questions, I broke down crying.


I was subjected to a well oiled and well organized medical machine and I was impressed. After the nurses took my information, my blood pressure and temperature, I waited for the doctor. The doctor came and we spoke, I told him my symptoms and he ordered EKG and an x-ray. Special staff came rolling an EKG and a giant X-ray machine on wheels and took my pictures.

 

At this point, I had stopped crying and was very hopeful seeing that everyone was on top of things. My dad was waiting on Facebook Messenger for the news from the test. I was waiting for the doctor to tell me the results.


The doctor came and it was good news. The x-ray was clear and although the virus was suspected I was not tested as I was not severely ill.

The next week I spent battling the flu and my tears with home remedies, horse doses of vitamin C, inhalations with vinegar, boiling vinegar around the room, gargling with vinegar, gallons and gallons of chamomile tea, sucking on Swiss made lozenges. 


My breathing improved on the third day. I was very anxious on the 6th day – as if in a biblical scheme I had read people turn for the worse on the 7th day.


On the 7th day, I felt better and the hospital called. I told them I'm better and thanked them profusely.


Sometime around the beginning of April, I stopped reading the news. I only painted, watched Winnie the Pooh videos on YouTube, and talked to my dad.

 

In a few days, however, the virus returned this time in other parts of my body and with weird shivering chills. I ran two heaters to try and warm up and wore all my clothes. In a few days, I felt better again and the second set of 7 days was gone and I felt better and almost 100%.

In this studio, I continue the complete isolation from news and people. And I only leave fully masked and gloved to get food, and I started writing essays and plan work. I occasionally dance in the bathroom with my earbuds on - there is a big mirror there. I'm pretty sure I'm alone in the entire building. As a work alone in the studio I can hear the rolling containers of the cleaning guy who comes to clean the bathrooms every day. I of course try to avoid him and keep a very low profile. But he was gone for a week and now that he's back is very reassuring, almost comforting to hear the sound of normality.

I washed my hair in the sink and realized that after all - this is what they do at hair salons anyway. 

Just started using baby wipes to paint. Also started peeling the hands. I don't know what happens when you start peeling hands. Baby wipes make great Dali.

Dusk falls onto the city outside and comes into the studio.

 

Great Art vs. Bad Art /  by Mirena Rhee

I wanted to write today about a topic that is difficult because there is the general opinion that you can't judge art and that there's some quality to drawing and painting that is difficult to understand. Even great artists themselves have written that they don't know what beauty is or they have implied that they kind of work on intuition or some other unidentifiable quality or action.

There is a definitive and very clear difference between great art and bad art. One of the reasons why social or political art has very little shelf life is not because of the message but because the message is the only thing that has been left to carry the work. When artists create social or political work they leave that aspect to be the main pillar of their presentation and because they already delivered the message they never care to remove the imperfections from the work.

You have seen many occasions where great artists like Leonardo and Michelangelo drew many sketches of future work. Do you know why they did that? Because they had an idea and they wanted to gradually remove the imperfections from the idea, from the drawing, from the design before they committed it to the canvas or to the board or to the wall or whatever they were working on.

Do you know why Picasso is so famous for his work? I don't know if you know this but his paintings were not done in one go although they look it. His paintings look like he just came up with something and quickly drew it. Guernica looks like he just sketched something on a big wall however behind each line there are hundreds of studies that he did to find the perfect expression for each head be it a human or a horse. They only look like they've been quickly conceived but there are days and days of deliberate sketchwork behind each shape. I saw this with my eyes in Reina Sofia when right next to the Guernica there was a whole room of preparatory paintings, with many versions of the actual shapes that went into the final painting. He gradually removed imperfections until he arrived at the precise shape that worked.

I used to work at Lucasfilm, and Lucasfilm and Pixar are the two companies in the world with some of the highest standards committed to film. Do you ever wonder why Pixar and Lucasfilm make the best digital movies? They have a process where they painstakingly remove flaws.

When I worked at Lucasfilm we had weekly meetings where each artist's work would be deliberately scrutinized on a theater-sized screen by not only the art leads but everyone on the team. Everything that didn't work was scratched and had to be redone.

While I was still working for Lucasfilm I used to come over to New York City to brush up on my old school drawing and painting and I would go to museums and study all the old Masters. This went on and on for years. I also went to each major museum in the world to each major painter and studied their paintings in person but that's an entirely new topic that I'm not going to talk about today.

I once went to the Morgan Library Museum in New York, there was an exhibition of Albrecht Durer. I saw a drawing that was 500 years old and it was very small and done with simple brown ink on paper. It was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen and is the underdrawing for his famous engraving Adam and Eve.

They're hundreds of variations of this drawing by Durer. In the final work which was one of his masterpieces all the flaws that he could see to the best of his ability have been removed.

Do you know why major Hollywood directors, the Masters of the film craft, make movies that stand out from everybody else's? Because Hollywood masters of film are persistent removers of flaws from their movies. They nitpick on every single detail to the great pain of their producers, of movie studios and of course, people who work under them.

Great work is really hard to do not only because it has to be free of flaws but because the person who does that work needs to know how to go about it.

There's a second and significant aspect to great work and it is the ideas in the deep work that underlie it and serve as a solid foundation for the work. How can you possibly tell deep work from shallow work, the difference is that there's absolutely nothing random or accidental in great work.

If you were sitting next to Rembrandt and you asked him why he used that particular paint or that particular stroke and how is it that he made that seeming mess work wonders to the eyes - he is going to have a definitive answer, he would know exactly how the white that he uses works with other paints to create brilliant highlight effect, the mess was a result of meticulous wiping and reapplying paint simply because he was trying to remove the flaws from whatever he was trying to achieve in his painting. 

So if you look at Rembrandt's paintings, especially the ones that look almost three-dimensional and look like a total mess when you put your nose right next to them - it is because he accrued paint layer after paint layer where in each he would wipe out whatever was not working and would reapply paint and then he would wipe again and reapply until it worked. He would use sticks, fingers, forks, rags I don't know. Now all these scientists poking around are trying to figure out all these different composites in his work. He was getting rid of stuff and then reapplying stuff and rinsing and repeating until it worked.

I've seen many, many paintings where there was tons of paint and visible and recognizable shapes made on a canvas and there were colors and all kinds of things on there, but they collectively had no staying power, like the sum of the parts was no greater. Because they did not gradually remove flaws from the underlying idea. Many people in contemporary art make a design on a computer and they commit that design to the canvas. It's mostly painting by the numbers and you see that it was just applied once and it was considered done.

Well, the problem is like with any work once you commit it to the medium you have to go into a process that's called flaw removal, or in other words, you have to work on it. You have seen this process yourself when you've tried to do projects, in your own drawing and painting, or even do-it-yourself projects at home, things never work right off the bat.

Because nothing works right off the bat, if you have tried to draw and paint and you went, well, I can't do this. It's not because you can't do it but because you haven't learned how to remove the flaws and improve it. Because even the greatest artists in the world start with something really stupid and lame that doesn't work and they gradually work on making it better, more beautiful, and with a higher standard by removing the flaws and imperfections in many rounds of judging and arriving at something if not entirely flawless - much better than the first piece. If you do this consistently for 20, 30 years you get great art.

I ask you, humbly: don't click away. /  by Mirena Rhee

Hi art lover, today, for the 1st time in my life, I ask you to defend my public art projects, performance art and installations independence. Until now I have financed and covered all project expenses completely on my own, without any commercial involvement. If my art has given you $2.75 worth of light, take a minute to donate to keep my public art thriving. If you are one of my rare donors, I warmly thank you.

Hand Drawn Archimedean Solids /  by Mirena Rhee

A series of pen and ink drawings, 8 x 11 inches, 2019
The series eventually came together in a handmade book called “Hands and Archimedean Solids, a Hand Drawn Book of Hands and Solids, vol.2”

I made a downloadable pdf with all of the Archimedean Solids that you can print at home, cut and decorate your Christmas Tree with. Download print at home Hand Drawn Archimedean Solids here

Thank you and Many Good returns to You /  by Mirena Rhee

Last night I was watching a movie about Charles Dickens. in the movie he complained about London being expensive and noisy and dirty. And then his sidekick told him - I know you always complain but London is your magic mountain isn't it?

New York City is my magic mountain, I wouldn't be the artist I'm today without New York City and its challenges. I haven't found another city willing to get down on their knees and paint on the sidewalk, elsewhere in the world people are just too skeptical.

Today I wanted to honor New York City and all its wonders - which is actually the people. The following photographs were sent to me by people who participated in memory replacement election day 2020 on Union Square on November 3rd this year.

I remember a little painter she was probably maybe seven years old and she stayed and painted for literally 3 hours in the cold.

I wanted to say thank you.

Summer Playfield - an installation in Central park /  by Mirena Rhee

An installation with Giant Hands at the Wisteria Pergola in Central Park created illegally over the summer by American Artist Mirena Rhee. A series of Three One Day installations in Early September where the artist would hang the hands in the morning and take them down in the evening. Photographed by the Artist.

Thoughts /  by Mirena Rhee

It has been an incredibly intense year where I used the fact that the lockdown closed a lot of the foot traffic and the fact that authorities have been sort of lenient towards illegal installation makers like myself so I worked a lot and I also worked for the Census bureau which was bat s**t crazy. I worked with the ( lack of sense ) Census in Manhattan but I also went on assignment in rural Georgia which was even crazier than asking wealthy Manhattanites about their precise origins and the genealogy of their kids. Just kidding.

Although I love summer only of all the seasons and partially spring because it leads up to Summer I think winter is very beneficial in the sense that allows for a very reflective mood. I really enjoy meditating and reflecting on future projects and past work. I don't think it's very trendy to think about stuff but I do that a lot I contemplate a lot of works in quick succession and hold them in my mind and I do that for long periods of time and I think one of the reasons my projects come to fruition is because I think about them a lot.

Nothing about my work is random although I make a lot of spontaneous decisions - chances are none of it is random none of the numbers are random nor the ideas nor the shapes, everything comes from a solid foundation of previous work, experiences and visceral and tactile, or should I say close proximity to objects or people or being part of a soup of an environment that fosters certain germs of ideas.

I believe we humans have very limited range of choices starting with the fact that we were born kind of randomly into the universe but what is not random about us is that we can create intent, we can create outside of the encoding of our DNA , I don't think Van Gogh painted his cypresses because that's what was in his DNA and he had some urges to do it.

This is what is unique about art, art is this very special extra intent for doing things that are completely unnecessary but necessary for our culture.

Intent is very important even the law considers intent very special, you can get away from something bad if it was a complete accident but you can die if you did something really really bad with a lot of bad intentions.

The same thing is with art -it is our intent that creates the work it's not the medium it's not random acts of thoughts or random acts of flicks of brushes, it's just a convergence of thoughts, of intentions, of experiences maybe some urges mixed in but as a whole

art is an extra intent, the cream on top of the human experience.


And honestly because I'm dictating my thoughts and because we have invented such marvelous things as speech to text - I've missed out on a lot of the commas because this essay is just a stream of thoughts.

This Reality check is a part of my State Of The Material World series of essays /  by Mirena Rhee

Reality check

Well, it's not that when I drink coffee in the morning I think about supernovas, or that I dislike wealth, or money, or material things per se, I used to love going into Victoria's Secret stores for example, and checking out all the fragrances - it was an experience like in a Salvador Dali world with lingerie.

I love the small pleasures but they have become a part of a really large large world.

I like physics and astronomy because they keep me grounded in a reality that's much larger than the small world we live on. I don't want to be a worm with my nose down in the dirt. I want to be a pair of eyes fixed on the Stars.

I grew up with the foundation novels of Isaac Asimov,

I recently even re-listened to all seven foundation series, although I have to say that some of the, well, gender issues were a little bit dated.

But I dream of the day when our descendants are going to cover the Stars the way we just hop between the continents today, and they're going to have or think nothing of passing by a planet or supernova.

But for this day to come, we need to utilize the resources of our civilization and, all human beings, the greatest resource of our planet. Unfortunately, a lot of kids grow up in terror and darkness, just the way I grew up - if it wasn't for a little computer lab to give me extensive and free time with computers so I could realize my potential... I would have been stuck cooking for some dumb elf somewhere, sorry but that's the reality for a lot of creatures on this Earth., If you notice many Hollywood movies immediately show a female person, a female human with an apron doing dishes near a sink usually in the kitchen.

So we have to change the reality for huge segments of humanity - first and most importantly is kids who are currently stuck and unable to contribute and grow because of their environment, and of course, freeing the brains of women to be used and work for the betterment of humanity.

Knowing of physics and astronomy grows my world to include the entire universe, and its entire lifespan, so I could measure my little life here against the entire reality of our world. When I get up in the morning I want to know that everything I do in the world is part of a very very large universe, so I don't want to worry about the little things. I want to worry about the little things very little.

I want my work not to be just objects but to answer the biggest questions as to what is it like to be a human being, what is a beautiful thing that a human being can do in their day, and breaking down as many walls and barriers without actually demolishing anything.

So we live in a world with a Moon and many stars, and a can of paint is just a single wavelength of light entering our brains. Why do we like color?

I don't know but I'd like to give it to you freely.