Donna’s pre-med studies and her passion for Egyptian art led her to study wood and stone sculpture. African sculptures and Native American totems also influence her work. These iconic goddess figures are crafted with chainsaw, belt sanders, chisels, rasps and files. The figures are smoothed with sandpaper, colored with paint or pigment and finished with varnish and wax. She uses logs of osage orange wood from her grandfather’s farm in Illinois, and ash, pine and maple from New England. Each wood speaks a different language. Her figures are always female and range in size from one to four feet tall. “My artwork celebrates the mystical relationship between human beings and the animal kingdom…The forms say something that words could simply not express. There is a tremendous challenge in making a work of art for all the trials, and progressions one experiences before the form will come alive and begin to resolve itself. Sculpture is labor and time intensive and making art is a lifelong study with lessons for the eye, the hand, the mind and the spirit.”
-Donna Dodson
July-September 2010
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