“Mindfulness” — A New Exhibit Under Glass at the Roger Smith Hotel

Larger than life Gummy Bears? Models prepping for a fashion show? A Dublin artist’s outsize photos of New York?

You never know what will turn up in the windows of The Corner Space, the Roger Smith Hotel’s storefront on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 47^th Street. And that’s why we love looking in whenever we pass by.

Art under glass.

This week, through Friday November 16, a live art happening, courtesy the Thai Artists Alliance, is unfolding under glass from 9 am to 6 pm – and sometimes a little later as we discovered when we chanced by at 6:30 one night.

Artists will perform a meditative and active Sa-Ti – the Buddhist term for mindfulness – complete with a grand-scale painting and dance, according to the sign in the window. Mindfulness “alludes to an individual’s inner struggle towards clarity of mind” as well as “the affliction of having a mind saturated with unhealthy distractions.” Hmm.

We didn’t see the dance portion, but the lone artist creating the wall art was impressive –

Outside looking in.

and distracting in a healthy way. Working freehand with a black magic marker, he created a fire-breathing dragon before our eyes (or to be precise, he filled in a portion of his creation). At one point he left the room and returned with a new marker – 20 used up pens littered the floor, evidence of his labors.

“That’s awesome,” declared an onlooker in a jacket standing next to us. “I did a senior project with markers, and they stink. You can hardly breath after a while.”

A crowd came and gazed as the artist worked; nearly everyone whipped out phones and snapped photos. The gathering wasn’t three deep like the crowd that watched the Dolita models, who put on make-up behind the Corner Space windows last month, then sashayed out the door in tight-fitting dresses.

Still, our guess is Hour: Minute: Second, as the event is known, will have touched the minds of hundreds – perhaps thousands – of passersby by the time it closes up shop on Friday.