Miami artist Mira Lehr's 'High Water Mark' opens Jan. 24 - Live Auctioneers /
ORLANDO, Fla. – Mira Lehr, one of the art world’s pioneer environmental activists, presents “High Water Mark” on the 50th anniversary of her mission to protect the earth. The exhibition will open Jan. 24 and run through May 10 at the Mennello Museum of American Art.
At the age of 85, Mira Lehr is hitting a new high-water mark in her career with national critical acclaim and a passion for protecting the planet.
Mira Lehr has been championing environmental action since 1969, decades before others jumped on the climate bandwagon. It was 50 years ago that Buckminster Fuller chose Lehr for his groundbreaking World Game project, which that year coincided with the first lunar landing.
She was one of only two visual artists selected that year, alongside a group of scientists, poets, economists, historians and performers from around the country.
Fuller’s team of cultural pioneers worked on ways to make human life sustainable on the planet, and it was also a year before the very first Earth Day demonstrations.
“It was a time of great hope. For the first time mankind could see the whole earth in its entirety from the moon, and as an artist I was inspired by a new global vision,” says Lehr.
Now, on the 50th anniversary of her artistic turning point, Mira Lehr has been invited by the Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando to present a new exhibition titled “High Water Mark.”
With a career that spans more than six decades of artmaking, Lehr is creating more new work now than at any other point in her life – with a heightened sense of urgency.
“The time to act is now. We must start referring to this perilous issue as what it really is: Climate Armageddon,” says Lehr.
The artist lives in Miami, a coastal city that is ground zero for sea-level rise. When she put together this new exhibition for Orlando, Lehr made some startling discoveries about the Central Florida area.
Recent studies show that especially in Florida, even inland cities like Orlando are impacted by sea-level rise and its ripple effects. “The works in ‘High Water Mark’ confront these current scenarios that we all face, wherever we live,” says Lehr.
“I created these works to sound a clarion call for awareness and action,” says Lehr.
Her majestic Mangrove Labyrinth installations have now been re-imagined as The Protectors.
These sculptural behemoths are reconfigured up onto the actual walls of the museum, climbing sideways across the gallery walls to surround the viewer. This emphasizes their guardian status, showing how mangroves surround and protect against flooding.
Visitors will feel like they are walking inside the root systems. Lehr’s nature-based work encompasses painting, sculpture and video installations. She uses nontraditional media such as gunpowder, fire, Japanese paper, dyes and welded steel, and she ignites and explodes fuses to create lines of fire across her paintings.
As an homage to Buckminster Fuller, this show also features 15 drawings by Lehr that are rarely exhibited to the public. These are taken from mixed media paintings she created for an artist’s book to honor the World Game.
“Bucky had a great influence on my life,” says Lehr. “These images relate to Fuller’s concepts that I found to be meaningful to me while working with this inspiring man.”
They include: If used efficiently, there are enough resources to go around … Mankind is meant to be a success on this planet … and, You can never learn less
Lehr has also hit a new high=water mark this year with major national and international recognition. She was recently selected for a major solo museum show that headlined Art Basel in Miami Beach.
Critics are calling Lehr “the Godmother of the entire Miami Art Scene” because in 1960 she created one of the nation’s first co-ops for women artists. Her mentoring of young artists throughout six decades, and her passion to succeed in the male-dominated art scene of 60 years ago, benefited many in the early art community.
Curated by Ginger Gregg Duggan, the show is tailored to the Mennello Museum’s galleries with four distinct installations in each of the main gallery spaces. Included among the works is Siren’s Song, a monumental series of 10 panels that dominate one of the main galleries, spanning 40 feet in length and 7 feet tall.
Click to visit the Mennello Museum of American Art online.
Mira Lehr: A Walk in the Garden is making waves in China and throughout Asia as one of the must-see exhibits during Art Basel - Suho.com /
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Here Are 18 Horizon-Expanding Museum Shows to See During Art Basel Miami Beach 2019 - ArtNet News /
Art & The City: Top Players In Miami's Arts Scene - Miami Magazine /
In her six decades as an artist, Mira Lehr has created a prolific oeuvre of work.
The Doyenne: Mira Lehr
Mira Lehr’s North Miami Beach studio is tucked away in a very secluded neighborhood, yet her neighbors know she is working when they see clouds of smoke. “They think I’m crazy,” she admits. But then they see her work, typically ethereal large-scale abstract paintings reflective of nature in all its glory, sometimes with somatic features from fire, fuses and gunpowder, and they understand the statement Lehr is aching to make. “It gives a certain texture and resonance to the work,” she explains. “It has something dynamic in it. It also, philosophically, is the other side of creation. It’s a commentary to remind people everything is transitory.” Having lived in Miami for most of her life, Lehr has seen—and participated in—its evolution in myriad ways, and justifiably she will be celebrated at the Jewish Museum of Florida–FIU with A Walk in the Garden (through Feb. 3). The exhibition honors her six decades of art-making and features 10 of her paintings with more than 180 burned and resined sculptures dangling from the museum’s rotunda. “They have a glow to them,” says Lehr. “They’re beautiful colors and the stained glass reflects from them. It feels like a garden. A very celestial one.” 301 Washington Ave., Miami Beach, 305.672.5044
The Eco-Feminist's Call-to-Action: Artist Mira Lehr Electrifies Miami Beach During Art Basel Week, Six Decades Since She Began - ArtfixDaily ArtWire /
She founded, in 1960, one of the first artist co-ops for women. Mira Lehr was among the first to blaze a trail for women artists who were excluded from the male-dominated art world.
Today, sixty years later, Mira Lehr is recognized as "the Godmother of the entire Miami art scene."
She was shocked at the lack of an art scene in Miami in 1960 when she moved back to Miami Beach from New York, especially the plight of women artists.
"Women artists at that time felt stranded and hopeless in Miami," said Lehr. "I was determined to change that."
Headliner Art Basel Museum Shows Kick off in Miami-Global Travel News /
FLORIDA’S HANGING GARDEN - Canadian Jewish News /
When Jacqueline Goldstein saw a luminous resin sculpture dangling from the ceiling of artist Mira Lehr’s studio, she envisioned masses of sculptures, suspended like flora in an aerial garden, to showcase the 80 stained-glass windows of the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU.
As the curator of the museum – which is housed in a former synagogue in Miami Beach, Fla. – she convinced Lehr to rapidly create more than 180 sculptures to headline Miami’s Art Basel festival – an international art fair that’s staged in three cities around the world – with the enchanting exhibit, Mira Lehr: A Walk in the Garden.