Isabelle Collin Dufresne - Ultra Violet, an artist and muse to Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol. I photographed her and her work in her studio in New York.

"The Messiah is The Message" is one of Ultra Violet's works that spoke to me the most. It is a message I firmly believe in - you only bring to the world what is truly in you. The purpose of the life of an artist is to distill a message through their practice, artists are the priests of the unknown which they make known through their work.  

Please, email me for usage rights & licensing, the following photographs can't be used in any kind of media & blog without my written permission.

Rest in Peace, Ultra.

I have everything

This is a combination of two posts I wrote a year ago and decided to revisit as part of putting together the "I have everything project".  In addition to an essay, the project also includes installations, collages, digitally manipulated photographs, photographs of various objects and a sound recording.

"I have everything" project started with ( even before ) moving from the Marina in San Francisco to a small room with a red chair in Harlem. The title I got from a message I scribbled over a Nordstrom catalog. It is so brash, of course no one ever has everything and it is factually incorrect. Because you ever only need one thing - the ability to think independently.

For centuries people found comfort and security in being told what to think. Peoples have been thinking the thoughts of kings and queens, the thoughts of their masters, the town elders , the pharaohs, the priests ( don't get me wrong I am religious but I argue and think about my religion and don't you ever take that from me).  For if there's a great gift that the French gave to the world it is the opinion of the common man.

Now as part of this project, being a common man myself and also confronting the Occupy movement in New York, I made several sound recordings where I reflected on the question of what is it to have. Occupy had stratified people into the 99 and 1 percent, where there were some that had more than the others.  I made a thought experiment of trying to determine what is it to have.

What is it to have? To hold? How is it that we are having it when we are not holding it? How do we have the things that we supposedly have like our limbs. We posses temporary control over a collection of molecules that responds to electrical stimuli? Is that the having? But we do own supposedly things that we neither hold nor electrically stimulate. How  are we sure. It is a fascinating subject.

When I open a newspaper it is as if we never went through the Enlightenment. It is full of guided content and regurgitated narratives of sex, guns, and money. Have you ever wondered how many girlfriends Kant had, or Plato? Did you ever wonder how much money Van Gogh had? None.

No one ever tells you that the most important thing that you own, apart from your good health and the proper function of all your organs, is your ability to think independently. And the second thing is your ability to express and argue your opinion in public. These were the two Dreams of the Enlightenment.

In his Essay What Is Enlightenment? Kant defines Enlightenment as  "man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance." For his  second dream he says "the public use of one's reason must be free at all times, and this alone can bring enlightenment to mankind."

Once you have traded your goods and services, obtained lodging and food, secured your home, sturdied your frame and medicated your body, feel free to use the greatest gift you may ever have, free thought.

I have everything, 19 x 11 inches, sharpies on the back of a Nordstrom catalog, 2011 - Mirena Rhee

I have everything II, 23.1 x 15.3 inches, digital collage, 2011 - Mirena Rhee

The paper dress I am wearing is a 30 x 40 inches mixed media collage over a c-print of my Lucasfilm W2:

I have everything paper dress, 30 x 40 inches, collage over c-print, 2011 - Mirena Rhee

Ancient Rome in HD

Ancient Rome is such a powerful symbol, visually and aesthetically, as well as in terms of ideas, its battles and wars, the powerful personalities that blasted their thoughts across the centuries. Remember I spent hours with ancient Roman marble busts from the Vatican, just like with old friends. Here is Caesar's marble bust ( all photographs in this post I took during a Christmas in Rome ), video by Khan Academy :

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The walls of this gallery at the Vatican are lined with marble busts:

Visited the Colosseum in the evening on Christmas day and it was absolutely a solitary and beautiful experience, with a bit of drizzle and without a single living soul in sight.

San Francisco Halloween and Other Portraits

San Francisco Portraits - Cherry Blossoms.

At the time I took the photograph below nine people got shot in San Francisco about 100 feet from where I stood. Spill only fake blood, please. The only kind that's worth soaking the pavement.

New York City Portraits

More here.

Some Kind of Garden: A Journey Into Zen [Kindle Edition] is now live on the Kindle store

Mysterious and enigmatic, abstract and impenetrable, the Zen gardens of Kyoto are a product of enlightened and sophisticated culture whose aim was to transcend nature by means of a man made nature.

The empty space, the surrounding landscape and the frame of mind of the viewer are all part of the design. A design that transcends representation, meaning and ideology. A powerful idea distilled to simple ingredients, the evaporation of art as we know it.

The book is a collection of photographs I took and small poems I wrote during my journey to the Zen gardens of Kyoto. I felt it is impossible to untangle their mystery with the rational instrument of reason. It is a stream of visual and versed thoughts on the joyful occasion of simply being there.

Accompanying my photographs and poems are several short verses from Basho, Ryokan and other Zen poets. Their words have sometimes been modified to fit my own frame of mind, using their verses᠆ superior ability to express my own feelings.

This book is about the frame of mind and the geometry of calm that the Zen gardens of Kyoto represent. As there are no explanations on the walls of the gardens as to the meaning of the sand patterns, so is my book void of explanations and floats on a visual lotus, like an imaginary house.

This book is a photographic essay about the Zen gardens of Kyoto, designed specifically for the Kindle and features stunning, high-resolution photographs accompanied by small poems I wrote and small verses by Zen poets. It is crafted to create a calm space of the mind, a vision of tranquility and peace.

The title derives its name from an ongoing photographic chronicles I called “some kind of" project, of which Some Kind of Garden is the first volume.

Some Kind of Garden: A Journey Into Zen by Mirena Rhee   Learn more

Leafing through Some Kind of Garden - A Journey into Zen

Some Kind of Project has a new face

My Book Some Kind of Garden - A Journey into Zen is up - Get Your Copy and Enter Zen Now !

It is a gorgeous Zen Book with Very Large Photographs and Very Small Poems.

I call these Zen Gardens the Geometry of Calm.

For me going to Kyoto was getting into the Zen space of the Mind. Japanese Zen Gardens have very little to do with Horticulture and a lot to do with sophisticated culture refined by the teachings and reflections of Zen Masters, whose sole focus had been to contemplate and distill reality to simple, vanishing abstractions.

Why some kind of? Some kind of is a larger body of work that started long time ago and contains Photographs, Video and Text. Some kind of is a thread that runs through all of my work and hops on various obsessions like one of those Stepping Stone Bridges in my book.

Enough said, Get Your Zen fix Now!

Featuring small poems by Shiko, Hanshan, Ryokan, Huang Po, Basho and myself.  With my poems being the smallest poems.

Occupying my painting for the first issue of Revolt magazine

100 percent Ultra Violet

I went to Ultra Violet's studio this past weekend to take photographs of her and her work. Ultra Violet said the first person she met off the boat ( arriving from France in the 60's ) was Salvador Dali.  She became his muse, and later on, became a muse to Andy Warhol and a superstar in his Factory.

The Art of Occupy Wall Street.. now that it's gone

Yesterday I went to Liberty Plaza and took photographs of The Art of Occupy Wall Street. Including Lego OWS and the very special Octopi WS by the guy who Paints Outside his Own Box.

Bay to Breakers Portraits

This series for me is a collective reflection on the human condition. Behind the funny hats and painted faces are the anxieties we face in the 21 century - terrorism, global disaster threats like the Swine flu, freedom to choose partners, freedom to accept other people's choices, the environmental Health of our Spaceship Earth, globalization, multiculturalism and the extinction of identity.

Christmas

I will spend Christmas in the Netherlands again, although for a very short amount of time and afterward I am heading to Madrid to study at the Prado, mostly to look at Hieronymus Bosch work, hope it's not travelling somewhere. Especially interested in The Garden of Earthly Delights, the museum site says it's in room 56, so I'll be there.

Slices of a Mountain

Fashion Feud

My favorite sport is base jumping, I practice a special version of it where you have to perform some aerial acrobatics and go through a series of hoops to get the chute to open. I really enjoy this. Occasionally I look at fashion and the display of fabrics accompanied by beautiful lighting.

On my second visit to Alcatraz...

I felt the oppression embeded in the walls and the pain of the inprisoned ghosts, I wouldn't say this was very attractive to me. I find it very strange this place is a tourist attraction.

Looking out of the rock and towards the beautiful city across the bay I can think of only one thing - how very priviliged we are to enjoy our freedoms and to enjoy the freedom to do the things we love.