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The key to the universe
(by Karen F. Mrnarevic - February 20, 2008)
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STAFF PHOTOS BY KAREN F. MRNAREVIC
Hee Sung Lee sits before her most recent Om Mandala painting in her
Woodcliff
Lake
studio.
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| A detail of Lee’s most recent work. |
Hee Sung Lee is trying to get to Ground Zero. For the past several years, she has yearned to find a place to exhibit her artwork near the site of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She is not doing it out of self-interest. It is not her intention to promote herself. Lee is trying to bring peace to the site, and she believes her art will help the lost souls of the thousands who died finally find their way to heaven.
She describes her experience in Korean, and her daughter,
Woodcliff
Lake
resident Iris You, translates. “Before 9/11, she was having dreams for weeks about tiny spirits embedded in concrete and metal. She was not well for many days… In one dream, there was a piece of fabric with a red circle in the middle, she felt that that is the way to send spirits to heaven and put them at peace. She tried at home to paint the circle that she saw… When she started to paint, it just happened, the paintings started coming out.”
On March 4, an exhibit of Lee’s work, entitled “An Artist’s Memorial for 911: A Path to Heaven,” will open at NYMEX in the
World
Financial
Center
in
Manhattan
. Her work will be displayed there throughout the month of March. Due to security concerns in the building, the exhibit, unfortunately, will not be open to the public. However,
Pascack
Valley
residents can view Lee’s art for free at the River Vale Public Library through the end of February.
For the past 20 years, Lee has painted various different meditations on the same theme, the sacred Sanskit symbol “
Om
,” which in the Hindu Religion represents the sound that existed before the universe was created. In simple terms,
Om
is used to signify the ultimate truth that all is one, and is uttered in meditation to aid in the discovery of truth and harmony.
“Mandala” is a term (also originating in the Sanskrit language) for any plan, chart or geometric pattern that represents a microcosm of the universe from the human perspective. Mandala may be employed as a spiritual teaching tool or as an aid in inducing a meditative trance. Certain groups of Tibetan monks are known to produce labor-intensive sand-paintings, which normally take the form of the Mandala.
Lee’s artwork is not the product of a formal education – she does not consider herself a professional artist – but rather the result of years of training in Zen Buddhism and Yoga. If you ask her, every one of her “Om Mandala” paintings is a spiritual journey. “To her, each dot is a prayer, the act of meditation is the painting,” says You.
She wakes up every morning around 2 a.m. and begins to meditate, bowing hundreds of times before a statue of Buddha. Lee mixes the pigments for her paintings herself, to achieve the perfect texture, and uses a natural hair paintbrush with a very fine tip. She favors a delicate, richly textured handmade Korean paper over more durable canvas. After doing her bows, Lee sets to work, sometimes leaning over a piece for 15 hours before she decides it is time to stop.
Lee, who recently moved to
Woodcliff
Lake
from
Seoul,
, believes that fate and faith have brought her here. While she was training in Hatha Yoga in the 1980s, she had an experience that changed her life. “She was really focused on spirituality in her studies,” her daughter explains. “She didn’t go out, she stayed in, meditated, didn’t eat much… She was getting very weak and she felt that her body was just getting cold.”
Lee believes that the intensity of her meditation brought her to a point at which her soul almost left her body. Then, a powerful feeling came to her that she can only describe as a deep sound, rising from within the core of her body. “With that
Om
, she felt warmth overcoming her whole body, and she felt a sweat come out of her forehead. She did not know about
Om
when she had that experience. It was something she did not know how to explain at the time.”
Lee eventually discovered what she calls “the key to the universe,” which brought her before a blank piece of paper, with a strong impulse to create an image of her dreams. “A while ago in her dream she saw the universe and a white road. Even in the universe, there is a road, and there is a door…” Lee says that she drew a rough picture in her journal of what she had seen in her dream. It wasn’t until later, when she had already begun to paint using the Om symbol, that she looked back to her journal and was startled to discover that the
Om
is itself the key that unlocks that door at the end of the white road. “She realized that
Om
is the key to the universe,” says You.
Lee published a couple of books in ; the first was “Four Million Miles of Seeking After Truth,” a collection of meditative poems and essays that reflect her spiritual journey and development. Her second book, “Mysterious Yoga” was published in May 2003. But her art was primarily a private endeavor until 2004, when she was invited to exhibit her work at a Yoga center in
New Delhi,
.
In , her work was received with a mixture of awe and apprehension. According to You, “The Om is embedded in Indian daily life. Some of the meditators said they felt as if they were being absorbed into the painting.”
Lee’s use of the symbol
Om
in her paintings aroused a measure of uneasiness among some of the Hindus who viewed her exhibit. “In you write
Om
as a single letter by itself,” You explains. “They never spin it around. It always has to be written the right way. If you spin it around it can cause a disaster, because the balance of the universe will be broken.” Luckily, she says, no natural disasters occurred during the exhibit, and You was told by one critic that her representations of
Om
were so powerful, that “3,000 years of Indian history [would have to] be rewritten.”
Until very recently, Lee was not comfortable with the idea of selling her work. “In , a lot of people wanted her work, but she didn’t feel she was ready to sell.” However, You says that her mother has come to believe that since her art can help people, she is ready to sell to public spaces where many can come and experience it.
“She wants for people who see her work to have a better life,” says her daughter, “She feels it’s not just her own work, it’s collective expression… We have to be more aware, responsible, open. We are all a collective people.”
Lee paints because she feels she has no other choice; she feels the universe speaking to her and must paint to bring harmony to the world. “I have a dream… You have a dream… They are brought together with human art.”
Karen F. Mrnarevic's e-mail address is Mrnarevic@northjersey.com.
| Comments (1) |
On February 25, 2008 Iris said:
Karen,
This is beautifully written article! I was feeling various emotions myself reading this article. As the daughter I heard from my mother the stories many times, but the way you wrote this came to me in new ways... also very helpful explanations about Mandala and Om. Thank you for the wonderful piece.
Iris |
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