Mira Lehr in her studio, Miami Beach, FL 2018
MIRA LEHR
tracing the red thread
catalog produced on the occasion of exhibition Tracing the Red Thread presented at The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami September 6, 2018 – November 4, 2018
Copyright 2018 Mira Lehr All rights reserved. ISBN 978-0-9989568-7-9 Curation and essays by Eleanor Heartney Copy editing by Larry Litt Art direction and catalog design by Cristina Molina Photography by Michael Fryd and Cristina Molina Fabrication by David Redmond Studio Manager Beatriz Rodriguez Studio Associate Ana Gonzalez Published by Silver Hollow Press Printed and bound by ... visit www.miralehr.com
For Irving and Lucy Sandler
CONTENTS Foreword 09 Alice Momm Mira Lehr’s Necessary Optimism Eleanor Heartney Interview Mira Lehr and Eleanor Heartney
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World Game 29 Below the Surface 37 The Mangrove as Labyrinth
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Mixing Currents 73 Night Bloomers 81 Biography 87 Acknowledgements 91 Construction of Mangrove Labyrinth, 2018
FOREWORD by ALICE MOMM
Detail of fuse drawing process, 2018
A fuse is lit. Sparks ignite and thus begins a dance between control and chaos, destruction and creation – a ragged and exquisite phoenix rises from the ashes. In viewing Mira Lehr’s art we are witness to this dance – a collaboration between material and movement, color and form, a slow drift between knowing and unknowing, intention and surprise. Resin is poured. Bubbles rise to the surface and are held in permanent suspension. Translucent panels nod and dip, casting blue shadows upon shoulders and floors. Stiffened rope meanders and shifts course until a tight grip twists it up toward the sky – we are creatures in a mangrove forest. Silver emulsion sprays light in all directions and we are awash in a shimmering sea. Colors drip and sway in riotous splendor and then are bleached away – skeletal remains of a memory. And again, Mira’s dance becomes our own. The works in this exhibition bear witness to the environmental challenges faced by Southern Florida and by extension the global challenges faced by all sentient beings in the age of the Anthropocene. And yet it is also deeply lyrical, offering beauty and sensorial participation. With full acknowledgment of the devastating environmental changes she has witnessed in her lifetime, Mira still asks us to find the splendor that remains within the ragged edges. It is beauty that softens the blow. In poetry and metaphor, we can navigate the storm. It is fitting that Mira’s early participation in Buckminster Fuller’s World Game, with its utopian belief in humanity’s ability to offer solutions to the vast web of problems it has created, continues to offer her – and by extension us – the vision and belief that reparations are still possible. I was first introduced to Mira’s work by Evelyn Lauder in 2007 when Evelyn and I collaborated on the art collection for the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC. Mira’s painting, “Cosmic Energy,” was chosen as the cornerstone of the collection and is one of the first works seen by visitors upon entering the building. Since then, I have been awed by Mira’s intelligence, joy, tenacity and continually evolving experimentation. In 2015, I purchased 2 large-scale works by Mira for MSK’s new Josie Robertson Surgery Center in NYC. One of the works, a large framed collage called “Drifting Presence” arrived directly to the hospital from her Miami studio. It was big! It was glorious! And it didn’t fit in the elevator, and it didn’t fit up the stairs. I immediately phoned Mira and explained the situation. Without hesitation, she quickly exclaimed, “Cut it in half !” And so the piece was born anew as a diptych, easily installed and immediately loved. What was lost in surgery were three small letters handwritten at the bottom of the collage – transforming the title from “Drifting Presence” to “Drifting sence.” A fitting (if misspelled) description of the sense and sensibility Mira brings to all her creative endeavors. Her ability to bend with the wind while still being present, tracing the thread between common sense and the senses. In this exhibition, “Tracing the Red Thread” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami and this accompanying catalogue with insightful text by Eleanor Heartney, Mira’s prodigious and exquisite artworks – fruits of a long life lived in conversation with creativity – will reach the wide audience and recognition they so richly deserve.
MIRA LEHR’S NECESSARY OPTIMISM by ELEANOR HEARTNEY
Sketches for Siren’s Song, 2018
Classical Greek mythology tells the story of Ariadne, daughter of King Minos, who helped the hero Theseus defeat the dreaded Minotaur. The Minotaur, a hybrid of man and bull, was imprisoned in a labyrinth strewn with the bones of defeated challengers who had come to kill him. Ariadne provided Theseus with a sword and a ball of red thread that he used to mark his path through the maze and safely return after fulfilling his mission. In Tracing the Red Thread, Mira Lehr uses this story as a metaphor to suggest how we might wend our way through the equally treacherous tangle of natural and human forces that currently threaten the aquatic ecosystem of the South Florida coast. Climate change, urban development along with oil and plastic pollution all are shifting the balance of life and death for flora and fauna that make up this fragile environment. As coral, mangroves and jellyfish are forced to adapt or die, human life as we know it is equally confronted with unwelcome change. These disaster laden problems can be traced to a tendency to make decisions in isolation – ignoring the ultimate impact of fossil fuels leads to rising water levels, for instance, while drying out the wetlands in the name of development removes an important bulwark against flooding. Ariadne’s story is a reminder that nature is a complex organism. There is no single straight line between causes and effects. To survive as a species we must follow the winding path created by the interactions of nature’s many parts. This idea is central to the philosophy of eco feminism, which has since the 1970s pointed to dire consequences of a worldview focused on control and domination. Eco feminists point out that the same kinds of attitudes produce an instrumentalized view of nature and an objectified vision of women. These entrenched belief systems emerge from the conviction that the cosmos presents a hierarchy with man at the top, rightfully subordinating the lower orders (be they the natural world or the female sex) to his needs and desires. Thus, the rhetoric of domination is eerily similar, as when the so-called extractive sciences echo the language of rape to extol stripping the land of resources or evoke a kind of droit du seigneur to promote deep drilling to mine the earth’s riches. Eco feminists, by contrast, stress the importance of mutuality in both the social and the environmental realms. Mira Lehr has lived most of her life in South Florida. Working in the eco-feminist tradition, she celebrates the beauty, fragility and interconnectedness of nature. In Tracing the Red Thread, she presents two and three-dimensional works that evoke dense thickets of mangroves, the dangerous beauty of jellyfish and the ethereal luminosity of coral reefs. Arranged together in an installation that encourages viewers to wander, as if through the Minotaur’s labyrinth, she creates a mysterious world.
Sketches for Below the Surface, 2018
Sketches for Mangrove Labyrinth, 2018
Its seductive beauty reminds us, not only of the gifts that nature gives us, but also of the importance of preserving these gifts for future generations. The guiding principle of this work, manifested both in its individual parts and in the organization of the installation as a whole, is the idea of interdependence. In this museum wide installation, Lehr offers a meandering, multipart narrative. Rooms offer narratives within narratives, offering the stories of mangroves, coral, and jellyfish as part of the larger story of the littoral ecosystem of South Florida. Each section is intentionally immersive, and each melds gently into the next, the installation itself thus offering a model for Lehr’s larger vision of an interconnected ecosphere. There are elegiac moments here, as Lehr considers the damage currently being inflicted on the coastal environment. However, she avoids the apocalyptic tone of much contemporary ecological discourse. The world she presents is simply too beautiful to allow us to succumb to what Robert Smithson referred to as “ecological despair.” Her optimism stems in part from lessons she learned six decades ago as a participant in R. Buckminster Fuller’s “World Game.” This remarkable experiment brought together young people from a wide range of disciplines. Flipping the idea of the war game in which opposed teams scheme to annihilate each other, the game’s participants were asked to imagine a scenario in which the world’s resources were used for the mutual benefit of all. In what is still a very timely area of investigation, Lehr’s group of twenty six participants worked throughout the summer of 1969 to imagine ways to develop renewable and nondestructive forms of energy. From this experience, Lehr conceived a more hopeful prognosis for our environment. Like Fuller she sees that technology is not in itself an evil. What matters is how it is used. Technology has certainly created problems but it also holds the potential for solutions. Lehr’s sense of hope is the result of her belief that humans, no less than wetlands, mangroves and jellyfish, are an integral part of nature. She advocates for a perspectival shift, so that we may see new ways to resolve conflicts that appear irresolvable when defined as a case of man against nature. Lehr pays homage to Fuller and her experience with the World Game here with the presentation of an artist book titled World Game Revisited that she created in 2000. Collages, delicate watercolor drawings and veils of color are overlaid with winding texts that reflect the lessons she learned from Fuller: Doing more with less allows us to reinvest Man’s unique capital asset – “hours of time of his life; We are like the embryo in the egg. As we grow we will have the tools to survive beyond this; One can never learn less.”
The heart of this installation is the abstracted mangrove thicket created from twisting ropes that have been stiffened with steel rods, coated with resin and finished off with fire. Rising from the floor to the ceiling of the gallery, these strands enfold viewers in a manner that evokes the dense tangles of roots that characterize actual mangrove forests. A winding red thread on the floor suggests a path through the labyrinthine structure. Caught within the tendrils are mysterious black cages that suggest entities caught in the web. They are not clearly identifiable but evoke the strange beauty of the swamp. Lehr’s mangrove thicket is not intended as a realistic representation, but it does draw on the botanical realities of this remarkable organism. Because their roots are often submerged in water at high tide, mangroves have developed a salt filtration system that allows them to extract the fresh water they need to live. They become habitats for all kinds of beneficial creatures. Their sheltering roots serve as nurseries for crabs, shrimps, mollusks, and other invertebrates. They also provide a refuge for sea turtles, manatees and fish. The mangrove’s massive root system has other beneficial effects. Roots hold back the water that advances and recedes during the changing tides, protecting the shoreline and minimizing the effects of storm surges. And they actually accrete land, contributing to the gradual rebuilding of the shore. When mangroves are weakened or eliminated, coastal areas are much more susceptible to flooding and erosion. As a result, the mangrove is the epitome of a symbiotic system whose various parts depend for their health and survival on each other. Coral, which Lehr regards in another section of the installation, present a similar story. She points out that coral reefs essentially are like cities within cities. Corals grow one atop the other. Each individual polyp excretes an exoskeleton that over time creates the intricate architectural structures that build a coral reef. Like the mangrove, these colonies are models of symbiosis. They contribute greatly to ocean biodiversity, sheltering various aquatic creatures and, like mangroves, serving as nurseries for juvenile fish. Coral reefs are also much prized for their beauty. Because most corals are dependent on light, they grow in shallow areas of the ocean where their brilliantly colored polyps wave gently in the moving water, creating an undersea garden that draws scientists and tourists alike. But warming and cooling oceans are threatening them. Temperature changes cause them to expel the algae living within their tissues, a process that turns them white. This phenomenon, called coral bleaching, has already affected twenty per cent of the world’s coral. However, Lehr points out that some varieties of coral have proved adaptive to climate change. They fasten themselves to the trash and debris collecting in the sea and are evolving to tolerate the warmer ocean temperatures that are becoming endemic everywhere. Meanwhile, scientists are learning to clone coral and to farm it using special halide lights.
Sketches for Annuciation, 2018
Sketches for Mangrove Labyrinth, 2018
Lehr celebrates this adaptability in the section of her installation she has called Mixing Currents. Here hanging halide light bulbs of the sort used to artificially culture coral become stand-ins for the coral itself. Their gentle glow within a darkened room evokes the idea of coral as vessels of light. Hung in a descending wave formation, they invite the viewer to traverse what looks like a forest of light. The immersive effect is enhanced by a video of crashing waves and an audio element that brings sounds of the ocean into the gallery. Another section of the installation explores the double-edged qualities of jellyfish. These invertebrate creatures drift through the ocean as if on transparent parachutes, their tentacles swaying in the ocean currents. They are at once beautiful and dangerous. The tentacles emit a toxin that kills their prey and disarms their predators. Some of these are strong enough to kill humans. But if they are dangerous, jellyfish may also hold the secret to longevity. Lehr notes that scientists have recently begun to study an unusual property found in a particular variety of jellyfish. Defying the natural aging process that limits the number of divisions a cell can undergo during its lifetime, the telomeres, or cel caps, on these jellyfish allow their cells to keep dividing forever. Thus, these telomeres may hold clues for the extension of human life. Jellyfish have inhabited our oceans for over five hundred million years but recently, with climate change, these ancient creatures have begun to move closer to the shore. They appear as almost invisible “blooms”, littering the beach and posing a threat to humans. Lehr notes of such incursions, “it’s a bad sign, it means the ocean is sick.” Lehr suggests this sinister beauty with jellyfish sculptures fashioned out of rectangles of tinted translucent resin that dangle from the gallery ceiling. Hanging from a circular armature, they cast shadows on the wall, again plunging the viewer into an alternate reality. With these installations, Lehr evokes but does not literally recreate the coastal environment she loves so much. This is in keeping with her career-long exploration of the synthesis of natural and abstract form. Lehr works in multiple media, creating sculptures, paintings, installations and performances that refer both to the history of art and to the visible world. The three dimensional representations here of mangroves, coral and jellyfish have their counterparts in earlier works. The mangroves appear in collage works in which twisted and frayed ends of rope become tangled roots. In other sculptures, colorful bits of marine rope are stiffened to suggest swaying coral polyps. Lehr has collaborated with choreographer Yara Travieso to create a performance in which a dancer appears to float through a watery web.
She has also created two-dimensional works that use collage, ink, drawing and bits of singed Japanese paper, whose smoky irregular edges have been created by the controlled ignition of gunpowder and fuses. This unusual mark making technique contributes to unexpected effects that suggest the mysterious denizens of the underwater realm, the collapse of the upper and lower realms upon the reflective surface of the water, and the liquid expanse of the heavens above. For this installation Lehr has also created several panoramic paintings that capture the light and magic of the natural world. These also employ ignited gunpowder whose residue creates a rippling effect on the surface of the canvas. These variations of light and dark cause the paintings to shimmer with a silver sheen that evokes both the reflective surface of water and the mysterious mist rising from the swamp. Dancing over the surface of the paintings are abstracted shapes that might be creatures, flowers or shadows. The burn process itself, with its combination of creation and destruction, offers a metaphor for the ongoing cycle of life and death that characterizes the natural world. These panoramas line the mangrove thicket, extending its mysterious splendor beyond the walls of the gallery. In Tracing the Red Thread, Mira Lehr employs her remarkable aesthetic sensibility and considerable technical facility to entice the viewer into a world of fragile beauty. This world exists on its own as a realm of the imagination, but it also makes reference to our very real and very endangered natural environment. Drawing on a lifetime of creative exploration, Lehr allows the sheer beauty of her work to communicate her ideas. She conveys both a warning and a necessary optimism, reminding us that we will need our dreams in order to sustain our world.
Sketches for Tracing the red Thread 2018
INTERVIEW BETWEEN MIRA LEHR AND ELEANOR HEARTNEY: THE MAKING OF TRACING THE RED THREAD
EH: This installation conveys a great sense of urgency about the environment. What led you to this work? ML: Living in Miami Beach we are just a little bit above sea level. You are surrounded by water. When I was growing up here the water was pristine. It was always clear and beautiful. You could actually swim in it. Now its filthy with what they call fecal material. You can’t see the bottom of the water in the canal at the end of my backyard. The fish are getting poisoned by the oil and garbage and plastic things people throw off the boats. And with climate change the water level is rising. You have to pump the water off your land. In some neighborhoods they are talking about building up the sidewalks and there is much discussion about how to save various low-lying areas of the city. EH: And of course, it’s not just what you see on the shore, but also what’s happening in the sea itself. ML: It’s terrible. The plastic is breaking down into microplastic, and the fish are eating it and we are eating the fish. It’s very scary. EH: Mangroves form one of the major elements in this installation. How are they being affected by climate change? ML: They’re threatened. They only grow in very special places on tropical and subtropical coastlines . They are remarkable. They protect the land from storms and their roots are the nurseries for so much aquatic life. But developers don’t seem conscious of any of that. They cut them back and redo the shores. As they do, a whole ecosystem is destroyed. EH: The same thing is happening with the coral, another element in the installation. ML: But the funny thing is that some coral have gotten acclimated. They’ve developed a new strain that can fight off the pollutants and grow. EH: That’s very encouraging. And in fact, in spite of these dire realities, you have created an installation that is full of beauty and even hope. How did you manage that?
ML: People are affected by the beauty of nature. I know I’m affected when I see something miraculously beautiful growing out there. When I see how complex nature is and how beautifully it grows, I have a gut reaction. And I think others have that too. What I want to create here is not an illustration of nature, but something more. I hope I’ve created a structure that people can relate to intrinsically. I hope they are affected by something more than the superficial beauty of it. I hope the structure and composition will provide another dimension, something invented that you feel in your soul. EH: Your ideas about complexity and structure have a lot to do with the section of the installation devoted to your participation in R. Buckminster Fuller’s “World Game.” What are the links between your experiences of the “World Game” and the work you are doing now? ML: Fuller was very much in favor of technology. A lot of environmentalists and eco feminists are not. They would like to go back to a time when technology wasn’t so linked with capitalism, when we were living off the land. But technology is really where we can pick up expertise about what is happening to us. If you use it in the right way it’s a great resource. What lags behind is people’s emotional intelligence. From Fuller I learned that there are certain basic structures like the tetrahedron that are very stable . If you’re familiar with how geometry works, or with the building blocks of nature, you are very encouraged by how nature sustains itself and by how man can too. Instead of being so worried about what technology will do, we need to know how to work with nature and engage with technology. Fuller’s geodesic dome is based on the tetrahedron. It covers a huge amount of space very economically, providing shelter for people. From Fuller I learned about technological methods of obtaining sustenance for people by doing more with less. We can provide better ways to grow food on arable land now that we can see the land from space. We know when storms are coming and how to predict the effects of natural forces. We can enhance arable land or the desert. We have made all sorts of progress. The point is to use technology not just to increase business. Also to help people survive and to survive well. From Fuller I learned that we really can make a go of it if we work for human beings rather than just the profit motive. If we do that, we all profit in the end. EH: It strikes me that that’s what you are talking about with the metaphor of Ariadne’s thread that you use in this installation. It’s about finding the thread, finding the way.
ML: It’s a search for solutions really. We are faced with a problem and we have the capacity to learn. That’s our challenge now – what we do with the problems that are facing us. We need to try to understand how not to make further problems, and how to fix what we’ve done. We have to hope we’ve learned not to do more of the same. We started fixing the ozone hole, but now with our current government we’ve taken a step back. I have a lot of faith in human beings’ ability to solve problems but I don’t have a lot of confidence in politicians and governments and people out for private gain. EH: Maybe that’s where artists have to step in. ML: That’s what I think. If people have the capacity to feel beauty, and I think they do, they can understand these things. Fuller always said greed and fear are our greatest problems. That’s why, if people think there is enough to go around they might be able to work together.
WORLD GAME
Detail of World Game Revisited artist’s book
In 1969 I was selected to be one of 26 participants to work with Buckminster Fuller’s “World Game” project. ‘Bucky’ wanted young people who could think in a generalway and visualize the big picture. He chose artists, poets, scientists and writers. He didn”t want politicians or experts who brought a particular view of the world. He believed they wouldn’t be able to see a bigger picture. We met in the summer of 1969 at the New York Studio School. Our rooms were equipped with tables, geodesic maps on the walls and a broad array of source materials siting the world’s resources, global climates and any other sources we needed to accomplish our goal. Our goal was to create a scenario in which all men on the planet would be winners as opposed to war games where one side loses and one side wins. We researched and conferred with each other and developed a scenario based on energy. Energy was the key. We discovered that fossil fuels would eventually be limited. Other sources should be developed. Solar energy, wind, tides, and many other resources were investigated. Our goal observations were included in a small booklet called The World Game Report. In addition, the event of man’s landing on the moon, where the whole earth was seen for the first time from a foreign body, reaffirmed the necessity of making this planet work in the best way possible, and that man is our greatest resource. The World Game is a scientific means for discovering the most expeditious ways of employing the world’s resources so efficiently and omniconsiderately as to be able to provide a higher standard of living for all of humanity-higher than has heretofore been experienced by any humans-and on a continually sustainable basis while enabling all of humanity to enjoy the whole of planet earth without any individual profiting at the expense of another and without interference with one another, while arresting pollutions and conserving the wild resources and antiquities. The World Game discards the Malthusian doctrine which is the present working assumption of the major states which holds that humanity is multiplying much more rapidly than it can supply re-sources to itself, and compounds Darwin’s survival of the fittest, to assume that only the side with the greatest arms can survive. The World Game—an assimilated logistical operation for 40 years—has already demonstrated beyond question that the Malthusian doctrine is fallacious and that committing all the high technology resources now going into the world’s annual 50 billion dollar war making facilities, all of humanity can be brought to economic success within one quarter century-thus eliminating the fundamental raison d’etre of war. The World Game employs the general system logistics for the reorganizer use of the world’s resources and employs comprehensive and progressive series of waves of producing higher performance per units of invested time, energy, and know how and each and every component function of the over all scheduling. The World Game makes it possible for the intelligent amateurs to discover within a few weeks of research and interest that the foregoing premises are valid. —R. Buckminster Fuller
BELOW THE SURFACE
Mira Lehr in her studio, Miami Beach, 2018
Eternal Factor, 48� x 26�, Resin, dyed Japanese paper, Japanese ink, and steel beads on acrylic, 2018
Eternal Factor II, 48” x 26”, Resin, dyed Japanese paper, Japanese ink and steel beads on acrylic, 2018
Below the Surface, large-scale installation with 48� x 26� panels, resin, dyed Japanese paper, Japanese ink and steel beads on acrylic, 2018
Premonitions I, 48� x 26�, Resin, dyed Japanese paper, Japanese ink, and steel beads on acrylic, 2018
Premonitions II, 48� x 26�, Resin, dyed Japanese paper, Japanese ink, and steel beads on acrylic, 2018
The wild beauty of jellyfish is mesmerizing. I could look at them forever. The way they effortlessly ride on the currents with their translucent ‘parachutes’ flowing out behind them captures my imagination. Their weightlessness and “going with the flow” also reminds me that beneath beauty there can be hidden danger.
Model of Below the Surface, large-scale installation with 48” x 26” panels, resin, dyed Japanese paper, Japanese ink and steel beads on acrylic, 2018
Approaching the Singularity, 96� x 264�, Ignited fuses, gunpowder, resin, ink, and acrylic on canvas
THE MANGROVE AS LABYRINTH
Detail of Mangrove Labyrinth, Variable dimensions, marine rope, steel, resin, burned Japanese paper, and latex paint, 2018
Walking through these root systems is a voyage of discovery. The great cathedral of branches overhead shelters all kinds of aquatic life beneath my feet. Hidden passages open to new vistas. I see things mysteriously anew. They are an inspiration to me about survival.
Detail of Mangrove Labyrinth, Variable dimensions, marine rope, steel, resin, burned Japanese paper, and latex paint, 2018
Taking Root, 96� x 144�, Silver emulsion on panel, ignited gunpowder, burned and dyed Japanese paper, and acrylic, 2017
Reflections, 96� x 144�, Silver emulsion on panel, ignited gunpowder, burned and dyed Japanese paper, and acrylic, 2017
Creation, 96� x 144�, Silver emulsion on panel, ignited gunpowder, burned and dyed Japanese paper, and acrylic, 2017
Reflections II, 96� x 144�, Silver emulsion on panel, ignited gunpowder, burned and dyed Japanese paper, and acrylic, 2017
Exhibition model of Mangrove Labyrinth and Siren’s Song
Siren’s Song, 96” x 480”, Silver emulsion on panel, ignited gunpowder, burned and dyed Japanese paper, and acrylic, 2017
Exhibition model of Mangrove Labyrinth
Blue Mangrove, 48� x 48�, Silver emulsion on canvas, ignited gunpowder,burned and dyed Japanese paper, and acrylic, 2017
Magenta Mangrove, 72� x 60�, Silver emulsion on canvas, ignited gunpowder,burned and dyed Japanese paper, and acrylic, 2017
Search, 48� x 96�, Hand drawing, ink, nylon, resin, and burned Japanese Paper on Canvas, 2017
MIXING CURRENTS
I am saddened to think of the decimation of the corals today. The colors, the beauty of the reefs and the interdependent colonies seem miraculous. I am grateful that aquaculture can grow new coral colonies and help restore what we are losing. It is still appalling, but maybe by showing tanks of these wondrous “cities�, people will learn to value them more.
Model for Mixing Currents installation, light bulbs, video projection and mirrored acrylic
Detail of Model for Mixing Currents installation, light bulbs, video projection and mirrored acrylic
NIGHT BLOOMERS
Much of Mira Lehr’s work has an immersive quality, surrounding the viewer in a way that addresses multiple senses. Her wearable sculptures take this idea in a different direction. These works feature brilliantly colored fragments of resin that appear to bloom like tropical blossoms. They are created using the same techniques that Lehr has pioneered for her paintings and sculptures. Resin poured over dyed Japanese paper creates shapes that evoke but don’t specifically reference the exotic flora of the South Florida environment. Lehr carefully burns the edges, cutting the resin-dipped paper with fire to create unique and unexpected outlines that mirror the unpredictability of nature. Some of these resin forms have barely perceptible writing on them – secret messages that read like fragments of poetry and carry echoes of the cherished lockets that Victorian women used to wear to keep their loved ones close. Strung together on metal chains these (literally) hot-house blooms become necklaces that enfold the wearer in Lehr’s vision of nature. They are personalized and tactile versions of the larger installations, and in fact very similar blooms lurk in the mangrove installation of Tracing the Red Thread. In both contexts these glowing forms are reminders of the unexpected beauty that can flash forth in unexpected settings. In these necklaces artist made blooms replace precious stones or jewels, reminding us that our greatest treasure is the natural world itself. -Eleanor Heartney
BIOGRAPHY
Mira Lehr is a multimedia artist from Miami whose career spans four decades. Her nature-based imagery encompasses painting, design, sculpture and video installations. Lehr’s processes include non-traditional media such as resin, gunpowder, fire, Japanese paper, dyes and welded steel. Mira Lehr graduated from Vassar College with a degree in art history where she studied with the feminist art historian, Linda Nochlin. As a young female artist in the 1950s and 60s, Lehr was at the forefront of abstract expressionism. She had much to do with mobilizing the female voice in cities like Miami, where she cofounded the Continuum Gallery, one of the first women’s co-ops in the Southeast. She worked with Robert Motherwell and in 1969, Lehr was selected to participate with Buckminster Fuller on the first World Game Scenario Project at the New York Studio School. Lehr’s art has been exhibited and collected by institutions across the U.S., including the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, NY, the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens, Bass Museum of Art, and Perez Art Museum Miami, the New Museum, New York, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC, and the Getty Museum Research Center, Los Angeles, CA. Lehr’s work can also be seen in American Embassies around the world. Her most recent video installation, V1 V3, was on view at the New Museum, NY. Notably, her work is permanently on view in the lobby of the Evelyn Lauder Breast Center of the Sloan Kettering Memorial Center. Two major works are housed at the state of the art Robertson building of the MSKCC. In addition, one of Lehr’s works on resins was recently acquired for the prestigious Leonard Lauder Corporate Collection in New York. Lehr has been commissioned to create a site-specific installation by the Vizcaya Museum & Gardens as part of the Lost Spaces and Stories of Vizcaya, a two-part exhibition on view from May 2016 through May 2017, in conjunction with Vizcaya’s centennial. In 2016, she created a site-specific 40-foot window installation at Temple Beth Sholom, Miami Beach, as a part of her exhibition Between the Meadow and the Moon. Most recently, Second Nature was exhibited at the Adam R. Rose & Peter R. McQuillan Arts Center in Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. Lehr has affected a new generation of young artists by serving as a mentor and collaborator. She has taught master classes with the National Young Arts Foundation and has been artist in residence at the Bascom Summer Programs. Her solo and group exhibitions number over 300. Presently, Lehr is represented by Rosenbaum Contemporary inBoca Raton, FL and the Flomenhaft Gallery in New York. A monograph about Lehr, Arc of Nature, was published by Hard Press Editions and Hudson Hills Press in the Spring of 2015.
Dedicated to Lucy Freeman-Sandler and Irving Sandler, whose brilliance, love of art, profound scholarship, kindness, friendship and sound advice has made all the difference to me. Thank you to the following people for their hard work: Curation and essays, Eleanor Heartney Art direction and catalog design, Cristina Molina Foreword author, Alice Momm Photography, Michael Fryd and Cristina Molina Fabrication, David Redmond Studio manager, Beatriz Rodriguez Studio associate, Ana Gonzalez Catalog editor, publishing consultant for Silver Hollow Press, Larry Littany Litt Executive Director, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Chana Budgazad Sheldon Many thanks to the city of North Miami and Natasha Colebrook Williams for her early recognition of my work that made this exhibition possible. I am also deeply grateful to R. Buckminster Fuller and Edwin Schlossberg for their inspiration as we “played� the World Game together at the New York Studio School; also to Fairchild Botanical Gardens and Vizcaya Museum for mounting solo exhibitions of my environmental work, and to Collin Foord of Coral Morphologic, who introduced me to the world of coral cultivation. Special thanks to Eleanor Flomenhaft, whose New York gallery brought my work to a larger audience. Finally, my family Alison and Michael, John and Katie, Elizabeth and Ian, Paul and Jeannine and my special kiddos, David Isaac, David Charles, Hayden, Charlie, Caitlin, Ian Jr., and Tager; all played important roles with their love and support for my latest adventure.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS