Michele Oka Doner | |
---|---|
![]() Oka Doner: Bringing the Fire 2018 | |
Born | 1945 (age 77–78) Miami Beach, Florida, United States |
Nationality | American |
Education | University of Michigan |
Known for | Artist, author |
Notable work | "A Walk on the Beach" Miami International Airport [1] [2] [3] |
Michele Oka Doner (born 1945, Miami Beach, Florida, United States) is an American artist and author who works in a variety of media including sculpture, prints, drawings, functional objects and video. She has also worked in costume and set design and has created over 40 public and private permanent art installations, including “A Walk On The Beach,” a one and a quarter mile long bronze and terrazzo concourse at Miami International Airport.
Born and raised in Miami Beach, Oka Doner is the granddaughter of painter Samuel Heller. Oka Doner's father, Kenneth Oka, was elected judge and mayor of Miami Beach during her youth (1945–1964). [4] The family lived a public and politically active life. In later years, Oka Doner co-authored, with Mitchell Wolfson Jr. Miami Beach: Blueprint of an Eden, [5] an intimate portrayal of Miami Beach from the 1920s to the 1960s using their families as prisms to reflect the times. Reviewed as classic of social history, [6] [7] with material that was part of the public record of its time, it was used as a textbook in Human Geography at George Washington University in 2008.
In 1957, age 12, Oka Doner began a year-long independent project studying the International Geophysical Year (IGY). She assembled a book of drawings, writings and collages that became a template for projects realized in later years. [8]
In 1963, Oka Doner left Florida for the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her art instructor Milton Cohen was experimenting with The Space Theater and George Manupelli began the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Their students were engaged in poetry, dance, light, music, all combined into a unitary vision, a motif that shaped Oka Doner's student years and is characteristic of her work today. Oka Doner participated in a Manupelli experimental film, a "Map Read" performance with art drawing instructor Al Loving and Judsonite dancer Steve Paxton as well as several "Happenings." Another influence was art historian and Islamic scholar, Oleg Grabar, who illustrated how patterns in architecture are able to dissolve space. [9]
A Death Mask, one of her first works, was selected as the cover of Generation, [10] the University's avant garde journal, as campus unrest over the Vietnam war escalated. Her Tattooed Porcelain Dolls were adopted by students protesting the U.S.'s use of napalm, causing disfiguration. "The curious tattooed porcelain pieces of Doner are rather disturbing truncated body parts, as if eaten away by some leper. These bizarre open-stomached puppets, tattooed like the natives of the Amazon, or exhibiting configurations resembling those of certain sea shells, their heads (when they have them) with eyes closed, moth half-open and brain visible, fall into the category of surrealistic objects, but with a surrealism filled with a sap which is naive, barbaric and young." [11]
Oka Doner received a Bachelor of Science and Design from the University of Michigan (1966), a M.F.A. (1968), was Alumna-in-Residence (1990), received the Distinguished Alumna Award from the School of Art (1994) and was a Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker (2008). She was awarded the honorary degree, Doctor of Arts (2016). [12] [13]
Her first student work, Masks, was exhibited in 1967 at the University of Michigan, and Oka Doner's Master of Fine Arts thesis show in 1968 was celebrated at the Rackham Galleries. [9]
Many examples of her work can be found on campus, including Science Benches, commissioned by the University (1990). [14] Other work can be found in the collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art [15] [16] including the large, cast bronze figures by Oka Doner, Angry Neptune, Salacia and Strider, located outside the museum. [17] [18]
Upon graduation in 1968, Oka Doner established a studio in downtown Ann Arbor behind the art gallery "Editions, Inc.," where physicist Lloyd Cross and sculptor Jerry Pethick were experimenting with holography. Using a krypton laser, they created the first art holograms. One of Oka Doner's sculptures was appropriated for this experiment. The "Ceramic Doll" opened in the world's first exhibition of holograms at the Cranbrook Academy Art in 1970. [19]
NBC's cultural reporter, Aline Saarinen featured other ceramic dolls on the Today Show on November 4, 1969. [20] These sculptures traveled to the Edinburgh College of Art in conjunction with the Festival in 1973. They were featured on the front page of the Financial Times in a review by art critic Marina Vaizey. [21]
Oka Doner moved to Detroit and exhibited at the Gertrude Kasle Gallery in 1971. [22] [23] In 1975, a new body of work, Burial Pieces was laid out on the floor of Gallery 7, then a Cooperative Gallery of black artists, led by Charles McGee. It was the first of many installations that shed pedestals and traditional ways of displaying sculpture. A one-person show at the Detroit Institute of Arts followed in 1977. Works in Progress, [24] also forsook conventional props. Oka Doner installed on the floor of the North Court thousands of pieces of clay depicting images of writing and seeds in the process of germinating. In 1979, the DIA initiated a small group exhibition, "Image and Object in Contemporary Sculpture," including Michele Oka Doner, Scott Burton, Dennis Oppenheim, and Terry Allen, which traveled to P.S. 1, New York. "To this viewer, the best work in the show is that of Michele Oka Doner, who makes fossilized relics of clap-bones, plants, primitive idols, and large pelvic-shaped structures that metamorphose into grisly chairs. She has elegantly translated these rudimentary forms into real objects of art." [25]
In 1981, Oka Doner moved to New York City and embarked on a series of public art installations. In 1987, she won a national competition sponsored by the MTA's Arts For Transit Program with Radiant Site [26] a 165 ft. long wall for the Herald Square subway station in New York City. The late architect Morris Lapidus said of "Celestial Plaza," "By laying these forms at our feet, she encourages us to stop and search the sparkling expanse for landmarks just as we would search the night sky." [27] This was the genesis for many installations including the River of Quintessence at the U.S. Courthouse in Laredo, Texas, and Flight at the Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C. For the Federal Courthouse in Gulfport, Mississippi, Oka Doner designed a security screen, Wave & Gate (2003).
Oka Doner's best known artwork is "A Walk on the Beach" (1995, 1999), and its extension, "A Walk on the Beach: Tropical Gardens" (1996–2010) at the Miami International Airport. It is composed of over 9000 bronzes embedded in terrazzo with mother-of-pearl. At one and quarter linear miles, it is one of the largest artworks in the world.
"Doner has chosen to express herself in public spaces, on a large scale…A Walk on the Beach…inspired by the marine flora and fauna of Florida is embedded into a ground sewn with inclusions of mother-of-pearl. More than walking on the beach, experiencing the piece is like being suspended in a celestial vault, surrounded by marine constellations and fossil comets, or rather walking along the bottom of an ocean where the milky way has become ship wreck. Doner has invented an astonishing, paradoxical map, where 'below' and 'above' are reversed, one overturned into the other; and yet the sense of wonder overcomes the vertigo of the upheaval of the natural order." [28]
A Walk on the Beach has been adopted by the community as one of the "8 Wonders of Miami." [3]
In 2009–2010, Oka Doner installed SoulCatchers, approximately 400 shamanistic sculptures in the kiln room at the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactury, Munich, Germany. [29] "The world itself has a soul, found in the human capacity of imagination. It manifests itself in dreams and fantasy, poetry and art." [30]
Additional "SoulCatchers" were exhibited at the Marlborough Gallery, New York (2008) and Frederic Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan (2009).
Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Germans Van Eck, Diane Brown, Art & Industrie, Willoughby Sharp and Marlborough Gallery in New York, [31] Studio Stefania Miscetti in Rome; and Gloria Luria Gallery in Miami, Florida.
Recent solo exhibitions include, "Close Your Physical Eye," [32] Manitoga Arts Center, Garrison, New York (2019); "New Works on Paper," Marlborough Gallery, New York (2019), [33] " "How I Caught A Swallow in Mid-Air," at the Perez Art Museum Miami (2016), [34] "Mysterium" at David Gill Gallery, London (2016), [35] "Feasting on Bark," Marlborough Gallery, New York (2015), [36] "The Shaman's Hut," Christie's gallery, New York (2014), [37] "Neuration of the Genus," Dieu Donne Gallery, New York, NY, [38] where she was interviewed by the artist Adam Fuss, [39] and "Exhaling Gnosis" [40] at Miami Biennale (2011). Her first video, A Walk on the Beach premiered at Art Basel Miami Beach (2011) in the public screenings "Art Video" program in SoundScape Park on the 7,000 square foot outdoor projection wall of the New World Center. [41]
Oka Doner designed her first sets and costumes for Miami City Ballet's production of George Balanchine's "A Midsummer Nights Dream" (Spring, 2016 and Spring, 2019) Sets and costumes were inspired by images of undersea creatures photographed at the Marine Invertebrate Museum collection at the Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami, Prof. Nancy Voss, Director. [42] The images were also the subject of the book and e-book, Into the Mysterium, a Regan Arts book, also published at this time.
Additionally, Michele Oka Doner created a large-scale art installation, “Mangrove Retreat,” in 2015 for Art Basel Miami Beach using Sunbrella fabric. [43]
Her work is in collections worldwide, notably the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cooper-Hewitt, La Musée Des Artes Décoratifs, the Louvre, the Wolfsoniana in Genoa, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Virginia Museum, the St. Louis Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Yale Art Gallery, Princeton University Art Museum, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. [44]
Oka Doner has received many awards and honors, including:
Selected Books by and about the artist:
Julian Stanczak was a Polish-born American painter and printmaker who was one of the central figures in the development of Op art movement. The artist lived and worked in Seven Hills, Ohio with his wife, the sculptor Barbara Stanczak.
Richard Theodore Titlebaum was a writer, artist, antiquarian book collector and literature professor.
David Vincent Hayes was an American sculptor.
Eileen Cooper is a British artist, known primarily as a painter and printmaker.
Ursula von Rydingsvard is a sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is best known for creating large-scale works influenced by nature, primarily using cedar and other forms of timber.
The University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan with 94,000 sq ft (8,700 m2) is one of the largest university art museums in the United States. Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alumni Memorial Hall originally housed U-M's Alumni office along with the university's growing art collection. Its first director was Jean Paul Slusser, who served from 1946 to his retirement in 1957.
Conrad Marca-Relli was an American artist who belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized across the Atlantic, including Paris. New York School Abstract Expressionism, represented by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Marca-Relli and others became a leading art movement of the postwar era.
John Raimondi is an American sculptor best known as a creator of monumental public sculpture, with works throughout the United States and several European countries. He lives and works in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
Claudio Nelson Bravo Camus was a Chilean hyperrealist painter. He was greatly influenced by Renaissance and Baroque artists, as well as Surrealist painters such as Salvador Dalí. He lived and worked in Tangier, Morocco, beginning in 1972. Bravo also lived in Chile, New York and Spain. He was known mainly for his paintings of still lifes, portraits and packages, but he had also done drawings, lithographs, engraving and figural bronze sculptures. Bravo painted many prominent figures in society, including caudillo Franco of Spain, President Ferdinand Marcos and First Lady Imelda Marcos of the Philippines and Malcolm Forbes.
Chakaia Booker is an American sculptor known for creating monumental, abstract works for both the gallery and outdoor public spaces. Booker’s works are contained in more than 40 public collections and have been exhibited across the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Booker was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Art in 2001. Booker has lived and worked in New York City’s East Village since the early 1980s and maintains a production studio in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Matt Johnson is an artist based in Los Angeles,
Sheila Elias is an American artist. Her works have been featured in exhibitions across North America and at the Liberty show at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Robin Rhode is a South African artist based in Berlin. He has made wall drawings, photographs and sculptures.
Dan Owen Dailey is an American artist and educator, known for his sculpture. With the support of a team of artists and crafts people, he creates sculptures and functional objects in glass and metal. He has taught at many glass programs and is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Art, where he founded the glass program.
Therman Statom is an American Studio Glass artist whose primary medium is sheet glass. He cuts, paints, and assembles the glass - adding found glass objects along the way – to create three-dimensional sculptures. Many of these works are large in scale. Statom is known for his site-specific installations in which his glass structures dwarf the visitor. Sound and projected digital imagery are also features of the environmental works.
Alvin D. Loving Jr., better known as Al Loving, was an African-American abstract expressionist painter. His work is known for hard-edge abstraction, fabric constructions, and large paper collages, all exploring complicated color relationships.
Mitchell "Micky" Wolfson Jr. is an American businessman, collector, and the founder of the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach, Florida, and Genoa–Nervi, Italy.
Terry Rosenberg is an American artist, known for painting, sculpture, and drawings that reference the body.
Lauren Kalman is a contemporary American visual artist who uses photography, sculpture, jewelry, craft objects, performance, and installation. Kalman's works investigate ideas of beauty, body image, and consumer culture. Kalman has taught at institutions including Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Currently she is an associate professor at Wayne State University.
Eric Ian Hornak-Spoutz is an American art dealer, historian and museum curator. Spoutz has owned art galleries in Detroit, Michigan, Cape Coral, Florida, Palm Beach, Florida, and Los Angeles, California.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite book}}
: |website=
ignored (help){{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)