Happy Birthday Dad installation I created in Central Park in 2021 /  by Mirena Rhee

Happy Birthday to my dear Dad. It would have been his 86th birthday. Rest in peace, Dad /  by Mirena Rhee

As I'm going through my emails I would run into emails from Dad.

He would say please call. Love, Dad.

Today I feel him together with me, I cried a little and I remember his love, he always made sure to tell me he loved me.

Dad and step-mom in front of the Yoda statue at Lucasfilm where I worked.

Dad in front of the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

3 and a half months after losing my dad and my mom is unwell currently awaiting very risky surgery and in pain, I'm consoling myself with starship videos watching the catching dampers installed /  by Mirena Rhee

I love watching the starships in sped up videos moving like little sharks swimming. It is so amazing to see somebody's doing something right in the world. While all politicians and especially my Democratic senators from New York doing very little work for the betterment of this country. The pretend work my Democratic politicians send me emails about is actually worse than nothing. My brother told me that phrase when something is so bad it's actually worse than nothing.

Of course binge watching all kinds of updates on starbase and starship that I missed out on, it's currently my only little happiness in the world. The starship factory is so amazing, cute and awe inspiring at the same time. And the Two Towers? Breathtaking.

The power to feel /  by Mirena Rhee

Painting is an active language. Pollock once told De Kooning "You know more, but I feel more". To feel and to observe are the two most powerful weapons an artist uses.. on himself. When you are out in the world you really see, you dissect the world down to the particles and reverse back through to the whole to construct a mental image, however distorted. You later bring these images to the canvas. In front of the canvas, you feel. To observe and to feel are somehow in a quantum entanglement, the better you observe, the better your ability to feel. You see a brick for what it is and then you really see it for what it isn't, a sort of stereo vision which overcomes the senses. That's why if someone feels one, an artist feels ten. You need that feeling powers ten in order to get the feeling flick through the brush ( or whatever tool is there ) and via the paint - onto canvas and from there to the viewer. The feeling needs to have that power in order to travel.

The confusion is that art is about learning how to draw or paint, that ability to render some ( or even strange ) reality. I think art is about learning how to feel. To feel is a powerful narcotic and immensely seductive. It is the blue pill, and the red pill simultaneously.