Phoebe Legere writes on her Facebook page:
EPIPHANIC. KAIROTIC. MYTHOPOETIC.
For two weeks, my paintings have been glowing on thousands of LINKNYC screens across the city—but I only saw them yesterday. I’d been up at Yaddo, deep in my graphic novella, when I returned to find my mind’s visions pulsating across New York’s electric skin. So I did what any self-respecting downtown mystic would do: I slipped into my Natori silk pajamas, hauled my Coleman camp chair onto Sacred Second Avenue (old Lenape path, old punk thoroughfare), and joined the cast of millions on the summer street, streaming in #NYC’s endless movie—I sat, iPhone in hand, trying to catch the miracle before it vanished.
The first to stop was Victor, from India, carrying a book called Gnosis. We spoke of wisdom. Then came beautiful Ariana, 23, in finance at @GoldmanSachs, who’d never heard of Phoebe Legere but fell in love with my art (and my shoes) And then—the moment that undid me—a homeless man sat before my painting, ate a simple dinner, brushed his hair with great care, and slept. I thought, I could sleep here too, safe in the arms of the city.
This is how it used to be. Before air conditioning, before screens held us hostage, we lived on the streets. Relationships, art movements, revolutions—they began like this.
The word that rises is "epiphanic"—not just surreal or wondrous, but a revelation, a sudden cracking-open of the ordinary where the sacred spills through.
Now go look. My art is still flickering across thousands of @LINKNYC screens in all five boroughs—kairotic"—time bending around Victor’s Gnosis, Ariana’s startled joy, the quiet theater of a man’s dignity witnessed only by my painting and the indifferent night.
Look up. Right now, on some rain-streaked LINKNYC screen in the Bronx or Queens or halfway down Flatbush, my work is still playing on loop. Perhaps my art will catch you, the way cities do when we’re not looking.
(Painting details in comments—come tell me where you spot them.)
Follow Phoebe on Instagram @phoebelegere
and on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PhoebeLegereInternational