We all made so many promises. MS. OKA DONER: And so he's now remembered. The high shine of the terrazzo floor, long associated with Miamis art deco, presents a gleaming visual allusion to the water surrounding the city. Thats white, archival wax compressed with a tool, compressed over and over again, so its burnished and the molecular level is very tight. And its true, light bounces all over the fissures and crevices of the piece. , MS. SHEA: I was wondering, do private clients ever call you up? I've done a lot of libraries, too. And most people thought of me as a Bennington-Sarah Lawrence type. I'd never really understood how dirty urban life was . MS. OKA DONER: To be respectful so that it can allow me to get up every day and get all the things done and not have to think about my body. Or not in art classes? Somebody bought it in Michigan. 
And then I walked around the area where they built the library and picked up different leaves and twigs and brought it back to the studio and worked from whatever was there. So no one cared about ceramics. New York had that to the nth degree to infinity, practically. MS. OKA DONER: Yes.
It's sad, but it's a nice remembrance. MS. OKA DONER: Not a lot. MS. SHEA: And you told me, or the person who was assisting you. MS. SHEA: Original? Shes interested, for instance, in the meaning of sitting on a chairthe privilege of elevation. I started very strongly with the figure. You had a beautiful quote, and I hope that you won't mind quoting it again, from the author Zora Neale Hurston from her book, is it? They do a lot of our bard, our local bard. michele oka doner husband. MS. OKA DONER: Yes, when he was briefly the curator at the Detroit Institute of Art. She rises from her chair and returns with a small fossil stone inscribed with the forms of tiny ancient invertebrates, a gift from an old friend. WebExhibitions 2018 Michele Oka Doner Selected Exhibitions in 2018: Dust Thou Art, Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey (solo exhibition) Mysterium, University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), Ann Arbor, Michigan (solo exhibition) 2017 Michele Oka Doner Selected Exhibitions in 2017: Into the Mysterium, Lowe Art Museum, Miami, Florida, United MS. SHEA: And you've really worked across the board in terms of media, it seems to me. MS. OKA DONER: Just the same way people want the new. And so I didn't have a very classical education. I taught. This trend is not likely to end in the near future.
"Michele Oka Doner: Scultrice, Maga, Filosofa, Donna d'affari. So I'm actually interrupting your work time. It was hell. And it wasn't so long before that the school of architecture was in the school of engineering. I wondered if when you how many candles are on? MS. OKA DONER: I think I always liked mother of pearl, and I certainly have always loved black lacquer. And it was in an old fruit basket, because they didn't have reams of paper and they didn't have art supply places and paper was expensive, so my grandfather painted all kinds of surfaces, and aside from the interior of the fruit basket, which I have here in the loft and it's really a treasure. So what used to be, 200 years ago, scarce, is now a flood. Fifty years ago, to endow objects with larger meaning, even ceremonial meaning, I often used metals. And then I read one by W.S. MS. OKA DONER: No, I finished two degrees and then we moved to Detroit. I've done extraordinary silver tables. MS. OKA DONER: Micky Wolfson on Miami Beach. MS. OKA DONER: I chose the University of Michigan because there aren't too many schools that were away that were . Then we would take out big chunks of sargassum seaweed and shake them over the pond. MS. OKA DONER: I like them all. You didn't have many things unless somebody wove something to hang up on the wall or . Eucalyptus? They had wanted me to bring bronze. And are . In most of these shows I was the youngest. MS. OKA DONER: I did, and I also exhibited early on and won an award, the Malbin Prize [1967], which was Lydia Winston Malbin. Oka Doner's father, Kenneth Oka, was elected judge and mayor of Miami Beach during her youth (19451964). She knew beauty and she knew line and form and color and design. MS. OKA DONER: And then I called the Library of Congress Photo Archive [Washington, DC] and found out that for $7.25 any citizen , MS. SHEA: You could have that same photograph. It would be interesting, and it's so much a bookend to what's out here and what I've done and in the studio. Among the projects featured in Everything is Alive, is the Shamans Hut, a 1936 hurricane tower in Florida that its owner repurposed as a retreat. MS. OKA DONER: Yes. New York was slick. 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. We all did. She was beautiful. MS. SHEA: Oh, I bet there were some amazing colors in that. MS. OKA DONER: I did. MS. OKA DONER: Very, because I have people here. flowers and a small amount of ornamentation. MS. SHEA: It's interesting. MS. OKA DONER: You can't be in it for the long haul. I was there last week at Higgins Lake [Midland, MI] visiting a friend and client [Junia Doan], and I saw pileated woodpeckers in the woods. Golden Reflection table lamp, 2016, offered by David Gill Gallery, Sedimentary box, 2016, offered by David Gill Gallery, Michele Oka Doner for Christofle wine bottle coaster, 2003, offered by Q Antiques and Design, Julie L. Belcove | photos by Emily Andrews, represented by Marlborough Graphics and available on 1stdibs. 1, New York. It just seemed ripe. 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. MS. OKA DONER: It's not easy. And, you know, to do presentations today you can really send JPEGS. Read it on the plane coming back formal vocabulary: Yes, a stanchion, back to the degree. Stable type of mode a lifelong study and appreciation of the natural world, from which she derives her vocabulary... Friends michele oka doner husband Miami Beach Arbor at the Detroit Institute of Art of Art made it and do... 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MS. OKA DONER: I guess, but I just never have. MS. SHEA: Oh, yes, first show. And they thought I was just signing it because I thought I made it and you sign a signature. Summary: An interview of Michele Oka Doner conducted 2007 August 20 and November 17, by Josephine Shea, for the Archives of American Art's Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, at Oka Doner's studio, in New York, New York. In Mexico they have the San Cayetano Church, where theres so much ornate gold and that luster enhances the spirituality of the building and perhaps adds comfort for those who gather there.. MS. OKA DONER: I'm so proud. He paid attention., Her mothers side is responsible for her artistic bent. Her work is not known, but its fabulous., She describes her mother as having a chic sense of style, both in fashion and decor. That's what it is. MS. SHEA: Ah. And I'd say more than anything that's a little research library. So her parents had friends in Miami Beach whose son had been drafted and he vacated a bedroom. MS. OKA DONER: Many times, and they've been here. MS. OKA DONER: Maybe that's my scribe ancestry. I'm reading in Miami. MS. OKA DONER: So I think that there's something very magical. But we were starting to talk about some of your public art projects. So there's several books here that are quite . MS. SHEA: And how do you use that time when you're traveling? And what's interesting is that galleries are changing now as young artists want to make what they call installations. The rings of Saturn, which were supposed to be gases, or space rubble, they used to call it, and found out actually were ice. . These things are 500 years old. So I had an idea and did a maquette and it was funded. Her artwork is fueled by a lifelong study and appreciation of the natural world, from which she derives her formal vocabulary. And it's a social history starting in prehistory, showing how the land was formed I guess 10,000 years ago is prehistory when Lake Okeechobee was connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. MS. SHEA: And it's a wonderful space. I chose a fossil marble for that. 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. I sit in the library, sometimes Saturday evening, and pull things out.
Now, I probably should still put a fixture in there, but I didn't even want to disrupt the ceiling. Additional "SoulCatchers" were exhibited at the Marlborough Gallery, New York (2008) and Frederic Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan (2009). MS. SHEA: And where did the branches come from? That was "City of Trees" [1994]. MS. OKA DONER: A Detroiter. This page was last edited on 4 February 2023, at 19:58. I also showed in the only gallery in Ann Arbor at the time, called the Forsyth Gallery [1968.] MS. OKA DONER: There's so many beautiful stones, and so that was, again, taking the vernacular and almost making a painting out of the floor there. And people send me images too. I knew them my whole life too. MS. OKA DONER: Early I check the e-mail, but it takes me no more than 10, 15 minutes, and then I do some quick things at the desk, and then by the time they come in at ten o'clock, I've gotten a lot done. MS. SHEA: And you were in, it sounds like, kind of a more of a family, stable type of mode. MS. OKA DONER: I describe it as a research library . He knew. Breitmeyer, Eleanor. And you can even work on it on the plane and send it when you land. Then you got the hairy nut, and then everybody stood back while you banged it on the hard surface, because the milk would fly. I think I've always loved beautiful paper. [Laughs.]. MS. SHEA: No, I was talking about women maybe that's not right more associated with the home. But he gave me a look. MS. OKA DONER: filling it with wax, yes. MS. SHEA: We're looking at the table base is round and presumably quite heavy. MS. SHEA: So you're both tropical and I guess . ], MS. SHEA: You weren't interested in that. So your second degree was a Master of Fine Arts also at the University of Michigan. And there was something else in it that was just so immediate and I read it on the plane coming back. We had a lot of southern people. MS. OKA DONER: Yes, a stanchion, back to the stanchion. I'm trying to think of the buildings for architecture. Oka Doner, in her signature white dress, gazes out at Soho from a window in her loft. We're looking into it. MS. SHEA: And did you give a talk along with the exhibition and . You know, it's not random in the same way nature was But it's random in other ways. And you don't want, let's say, Los Angeles architects just to consider Los Angeles artists.
MS. SHEA: [Laughs.]
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