We spoke with Miami Beach artist Michele Oka Doner about nature, the process of cast bronze, and inspiration. ", Castro, Jan Garden. It was the International Geophysical Year [IGY], a pause in hostilities during the Cold War, and a time to think about the family of nature, the family of scientists in the East and the West, and the taxonomic relationships that keep things in order. The bronze and silver Celestial and Coral Wave chairs draw attention to themselves, to their hard essence, when theyre used, but they also have a kinship to objects of ceremony because of the swirling, glittering symbols of sky and sea that are part of their surfaces. She references Horace, gnosis, disjecta membra (the concept of putting disparate things together), cellular biology and scores of other things most of us have long forgotten. She is not without humor or lightness but she is unusually and gratifyingly serious. | LEA NICKLESS PHOTO. To them, it wasnt art, it wasnt design, she says. On the day I visited, Oka Doner showed me her Poetry Cartsbookshelves on wheels shes made from wood and cast and fabricated bronze. DETROIT The exhibition Fluent in the Language of Dreams at Wasserman Projects picks up a project that Michele Oka Doner began 40 years ago. Although in recent years it has been graffitied and burned, the towering majesty of its expanding canopy is still evident. And I didnt want that piece to be dark. I was on the subway some months ago and it was bitter cold. I cook a breakfast every day and I pay attention to it. Oka Doner is a gracious hostess and you can tell immediately shes both intrepid and slightly shy. Totem is a heroic piece, rising like a grand tree trunk laced with vines and, at the same time, suggesting the abstracted form of an ancient caryatid and reminding us of beautys perishability. Your fathers the mayor.. Michele Oka Doner working on A Walk on the Beach, her permanent installation at Miami International Airport, where nine thousand cast-bronze images of sea life are. The breadth of her artistic production encompasses sculpture, drawing, public art, functional objects, video, artist books, and costume and set design. It is indicative of Doners style, which is heavily influenced by science and anthropology. Michele Oka Doner (105 results). On the left, a 1919 Steinway piano standing at the entrance to the library space is topped with A Burning Bush, 1991. New York had that to the nth degree to infinity, practically. Michele Oka Doner is an internationally renowned artist whose career spans over five decades. The same sensitivity to light was the wellspring of her design for the Miami City Ballets underwaterthemed Midsummer Nights Dream. 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. | CLAUDE SAMPTON PHOTO, Light, of course, is what Miami glamour was about. She had the chance to put her own spin on the concept in the late 1980s when she won a national competition for the Herald Square subway station, a major transit hub. She is well-known for creating numerous public art installations throughout the United States, including Radiant Site at New Yorks Herald Square subway, Flight at Washingtons Reagan International Airport, and A Walk on the Beach at the Miami International Airport (1995-2010), which features nine thousand unique bronze sculptures inlaid over a mile-and-a-quarter long concourse of terrazzo and mother-of-pearl, one of the largest public artworks in the world. A collection of Oka Doners works in clay from the 1960s and 70s includes the Tattooed Doll on left, which was in her 1968 graduate exhibition at the University of Michigan. Campus Maps | Calendar | Phonebook | Social Directory | PantherMail | MyFIU | Web / Accessibility Policy Michele Oka Doner working on A Walk on the Beach, her permanent installation at Miami International Airport, where nine thousand cast-bronze images of sea life are embedded in terrazzo with mother-of-pearl. [18], NBC's cultural reporter, Aline Saarinen featured other ceramic dolls on the Today Show on November 4, 1969. I used to look at it, and one day she gave it to me, Oka Doner says. Michele Oka Doner | Artist Talisman Shanghai Astronomy Museum Armory 2021, Marlborough A Seed Sprouted Prophecy Titan. Ocean Drive, Jan. 2001: 254. byJulie L. Belcove | photos by Emily Andrews. A cast-glass Radiant plate holds tropical seeds and foraged materials arranged and loosely organized across quadrants. | STUDIO LHOOQ PHOTOS/COURTESY PREZ ART MUSEUM MIAMI. dia. Michele Oka Doner. So during 18 years in Michigan, Oka Doner produced ceramic objects that pay homage to marine forms, fossils and primitive artifacts. Unlike the vast majority of public art, unassumingly dotting parks or anchoring plazas, some of Oka Doners pieces are seen annually by tens of millions of people passing through heavily trafficked, high-visibility locations, such as the Miami International Airport, the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the 34th StreetHerald Square subway station, in New York. I got better., Her furniture designs, which are represented by David Gill Gallery and available on 1stdibs, evolved from her lifestyle, she says. Shes interested, for instance, in the meaning of sitting on a chairthe privilege of elevation. The Freudian myth of the [solitary] artist is way past.. Of course, the year he left, 1964, is when all hell broke loose, because the people who followed him were not as scrupulous. Indeed, the mid to late 60s saw the rise of Millionaires Row on Collins, the condo canyon that replaced the calm, verdant avenue where Doner used to ride her bike as a girl. The videos below are organized by topic and run between 30 seconds and 5 minutes. "Bones and Squishes at the Detroit Institute of Arts.". Under water, the pieces emerge as massive, primordial forms, catching the rays of sunlight piercing the water. Calcium carbonate is the bony substance with which sea animals create reefs, he explained. IGY oriented her toward self-curated collections: shells and stones found on the beach and organized in rows like little friends, or her white stoneware raku Seeds and Pods spread evenly within an invisible square. The former director of PAMM who organized the show, Thom . Ceramic Sculpture, Gertrude Kasle Gallery, 1971. It was uplifting. New York, NY "Is an American artist and author. Isolated sketch of a bird . The high shine of the terrazzo floor, long associated with Miami's art deco, presents a gleaming visual allusion to the water surrounding the city. To get a really good look at this work, you need to don snorkel mask and fins. "I wanted to come in and be part of the dialogue," Oka Doner says. Born and raised in Miami Beach, Michele Oka Doner was made Guardian of the City of Miami Beach's Centennial Banyan Tree and represents Miami Beach as Ambassador for Arts and Culture in 2021. Another influence was art historian and Islamic scholar, Oleg Grabar, who illustrated how patterns in architecture are able to dissolve space. A lot of people go through life never really feeling awake. That poem was written a long time ago theres always been people who dont wake up. 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,[30] Studio Stefania Miscetti in Rome; and Gloria Luria Gallery in Miami, Florida. But you have to look at things in their time, in their context. Here, Oka Doner is using hot wax to create one of her Burning Bush lighting pieces. Almost three hundred of Oka Doners porcelain Soul Catchers are mounted as sentries on the curving wall of the entranceway. They were from the musselsthey had been collected from the mussels they ate . Photo by Nick Merrick, Oka Doner planted Spanish moss to reference the nearby Everglades. Koblick, who once spent three months in an underwater research station partially funded by NASA, has devoted his life to studying the ocean, but this was the first time he had put his scientific knowledge to the service of art. Michele Oka Doner is an internationally renowned artist whose career spans five decades. Though Radiant Site does not possess any of Oka Doners organic imagery, it surely recalls a natural source light itself. "8 Wonders of Miami." Heres something that is political, ethical, visual a lifetimes study of the ocean. [13] Other work can be found in the collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art[14][15] including the large, cast bronze figures by Oka Doner, Angry Neptune, Salacia and Strider, located outside the museum. 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. As her commissions grew in magnitude, she wove together two threads from art history. Essay, Michele Oka Doner et al. "[10], Oka Doner received a Bachelor of Science and Design from the University of Michigan (1966), a M.F.A. By Elisa Turner | May 10, 2022 Whether or not she's in sight of the sea, artist and designer Michele Oka Doner has the soul of a beachcomber, ever curious to comb her imagination for paths linking art and science. Originally, the artist was an extension of the community, of the tribe. 1945, Miami Beach) is an internationally renowned artist whose career spans four decades. Actually, it gets dark. MS. SHEA: Ah. (Now retired, Fred manages the business side of his wife's studio.) She grew up in Miami, as a member of a privileged family, but she is one of those people who would have been what they are regardless of background. | D. JAMES DEE PHOTO. MICHELE OKA DONER: I was born in Miami Beach, Florida, December 4, 1945, as the war was ending. Im back to the figures, for five, six years now, which has just been a wonderful lifetime exploration and these figures are even more evocative because I met a woman named Nancy Voss who has whats called the Voss Invertebrate Museum at the University of Miami. MS. SHEA: Right. The bubbles are formed by hydrogen, which is given off during the chemical reaction that causes the metal forms to calcify underwater. Breitmeyer, Eleanor. 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. The concourse floor was executed in three sections made up of A Walk on the Beach, 1991-1995, From Seashore to Tropical Gardens 1996-2010 and Galaxy, the eye of the storm that joined them in 2009. She had help on the project from Ian Koblick, a marine biologist and president of the Marine Resources Development Foundation. Michele Oka Doner's work is fueled by a lifelong study and appreciation of the natural world. But their broken-off leg stumps suggest a narrative; you wonder if theyve been wounded or violated or if, perhaps, they came into the world incompletely complete. The studio is a vast and elegant space with sixteen-foot ceilings, a wall of double-height windows, fluted neoclassical cast-iron columns encircled by white-painted radiators, and an upper mezzanine from which you can look down on an abundance of chairs, benches, and tables, including pieces by Carlo Bugatti and an ultramodern table that was a fiftieth birthday present from her friend, collector Mitchell Wolfson Jr. Everything in the open area has been introduced with intentionality, positioned with the same balance and asymmetrical symmetry as the stars and space matter that seem to float across Celestial Objects. What was your first awareness of art and when did it become a passion for you? In the studio, a framed poster from Oka Doners 1975 Burial Pieces exhibition in Detroit hangs above a work table. Its the mixture of these particulars plus extraordinary design intelligence, huge energy, and, I suspect, a heaping dose of obsessiveness that make her work exceptional. Commissioned by the Santa Monica Arts Commission. Oka Doners artistic practice, inspired by the natural world, is far-reaching, stretching from sculpture, photography and video to jewelry and furniture design. In her proposal for the piece, Oka Doner wrote that the two obelisks derived from her reverence for their site on the beach: One appears wrapped by a continuous wave-like spiral, while the other seems twisted like the interior caverns of a univalve shell. You searched for: Author: michele oka doner Michele Oka Doner - Unique Terrible Chair sculpture For Sale at 1stDibs Log In Sign Up Furniture Lighting Decor & Gifts Art NFTs Jewelry & Watches Fashion World of 1stDibs Sale Auctions Sorry, we're currently experiencing technical difficulties. In art he also said, and I love this, he said other than humankind, art is the only other thing that has an intelligible voice, which is so beautiful art and design are always in the service of an idea. After spending years making art that echoes organic forms, Oka Doner started working directly with nature to make art creating sculpture from spiraling columns of coral. Student Consumer Information (HEOA) | Emergency Management | Careers at FIU | Equal Opportunity Programs & Diversity Photo courtesy of Cirque du Soleil, Oka Doner adds plants to Micco, a sculpture commissioned for the city of Doral, Florida, in 2012. 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. As a bell-bottomed student at the University of Michigan, she appeared in an experimental film directed by George Manupelli, one of her professors, and over the years shes been photographed by such stars as Robert Maxwell, whose 2005 portrait of her modeling a sculptural necklace with her breasts half exposed appeared in the New York Times Magazine. 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