DONNA DODSON: CONVERGENCE: BOSTON SCULPTORS GALLERY EXHIBITS AT THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PLAZA

Monday, April 8, 2013

CONVERGENCE: BOSTON SCULPTORS GALLERY EXHIBITS AT THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PLAZA

Wednesday, May 1, 2013 – Thursday, October 31, 2013

BOSTON, MA: The Boston Sculptors Gallery is pleased to announce its first outdoor exhibition of monumental, site-specific artworks, co-sponsored by The First Church of Christ, Scientist. In a convergence of imagination and civic pride, over two dozen art installations from Boston Sculptors Gallery members will be displayed on The Christian Science Plaza from Wednesday, May 1 to Thursday, October 31, 2013. Join us for our grand opening on Saturday, May 4, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and again for the catalog launch on Thursday, June 6, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. A complete schedule of events can be found on the Convergence website, including images and artist information.

Each sculpture will speak to its architectural surroundings, activate the site that inspired it, and create a unique destination for the Boston community to see contemporary art. Following on the heels of the newly built Contemporary Wing at the Museum of Fine Arts and as a celebration of the newly designated statewide Fenway Cultural District (established March 20, 2012 by the Massachusetts Cultural Council), this exhibition carries forth the vision to draw attention to visual art of the moment and promote its prominent place in the life of the city. We invite the public to enter, look, think, hope, dream, and be a part of the experience.

Participating artists include: Gillian Christy, Murray Dewart, Donna Dodson, Rosalyn Driscoll, Laura Evans, Sally S. Fine, Chris Frost, Peter DeCamp Haines, Jim Henderson, Michelle Lougee, Nancy Winship Milliken, Andy Moerlein, Eric Sealine, George Sherwood, Margaret Swan, Marilu Swett, Leslie Wilcox, Joseph Wheelwright, and Andy Zimmermann.

Boston Sculptors Gallery was founded in 1992 by 18 prominent Boston-area artists to present and promote innovative, challenging sculpture and installations. It is the only sculptors’ organization in the country that maintains its own exhibition space. In twenty years the cooperative has held over 227 art shows and supported the work of 58 sculptors with work in 48 U.S. states and 36 foreign countries. Gallery members have received numerous honors including 81 residencies, 315 awards or fellowships, and 134 grants. Members have taught in 70 settings, generated 169 permanent public art works and 308 temporary public artworks, and are included in 1,100 private and public collections. Boston Sculptors Gallery articulates, challenges, and promotes the role of sculpture in the public sphere, in communities, and in the lives of individuals.

The Christian Science Plaza is a 14-acre pedestrian refuge amid the busy traffic patterns of Boston’s urban environment and attracts thousands of visitors each year from all over the world. In the heart of the Plaza sits The Original Mother Church, built in 1894, and its domed extension, built in 1906. The Plaza also includes an arboretum of linden, oak, and honey locust trees, a 686-foot-long reflecting pool, the children’s fountain, and the world-famous Mapparium™, the most popular exhibit at The Mary Baker Eddy Library. The Plaza has been influenced over the past two centuries by several architects, including Chester Lindsay Churchill in the 1930s and the firm of I.M. Pei & Partners and Araldo A. Cossutta, Associated Architects, in the 1970s and is a designated Boston Landmarks Property.

The Fenway Cultural District, the first Boston-based Massachusetts-wide Cultural District, is comprised of more than 40 cultural and academic institutions, community organizations and private residents and is managed by the Fenway Alliance, a consortium of 22 institutions. The owner of the Christian Science Plaza, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, has always been active within the Boston community and was a founding member of The Fenway Alliance, the group responsible for the creation and organization of this cultural district.

VISITOR INFORMATION: The Christian Science Plaza is located at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Huntington Avenue, in Boston, MA. Admission to this outdoor exhibition is free, and open to the public from Wednesday, May 1, 2013 to Thursday, October 31, 2013. Exhibition catalogs will be available for purchase after June 6, 2013, from the shops at The Mary Baker Eddy Library, 200 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston.

PUBLICITY PHOTOS: High-resolution images to publicize the exhibition will be made available to the media in late May, 2013. Please contact Boston Sculptors Gallery at (617) 482-7781 Wed-Sun 12p-6p or BostonSculptors@yahoo.com for further information.

Gillian Christy, The Space Within, Buds

Murray Dewart, Golden Bow

Donna Dodson, Tiger Mother (maquette)

Rosalyn Driscoll, Canyon

Laura Evans, Bag Lunch

Sally S. Fine, Minoan Reflection

Chris Frost, Grotto

Peter DeCamp Haines, Reclining Blade

Jim Henderson, Three Bronze Trees

Michelle Lougee, Green Coral

Myth Makers (Dodson & Moerlein), Poised

Nancy Winship Milliken, The Lighthouse

Andy Moerlein, Impossible

Eric Sealine, Arabesque

George Sherwood, Wave Cloud

Margaret Swan, Templum

Marilu Swett, Water form

Leslie Wilcox, Sentinel, maquette

Joseph Wheelwright, Loving Stones

Andy Zimmermann, Liminal Bloom

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Artist Statement

‘My artwork celebrates the mystical relationship between human beings and the animal kingdom. Because there were no icons of women in the church that I grew up in, my vision is to create them. Through hybrid female-animal forms that I sculpt in wood, I flesh out sensuality, sexuality and soul with a well-proportioned figurative vocabulary. The natural grain of the wood interacts with the form and shape of my sculptures in a descriptive way, suggesting nostrils, and nipples or garments and fabric textures. I often stylize each piece to enhance the girl, woman, princess, queen or goddess within. The mouths, or in some cases beaks, are closed symbolizing the mysteries they embody. These figures are sculpted in sizes ranging from the intimate to the monumental. I use color in both subtle and bold ways to activate each piece. My inspiration comes from ancient iconography and mythological imagery.’

About

Donna Dodson has been carving images out of wood for nearly 20 years. Her sculptures explore feminine beauty and evoke humor and playfulness but also grace, power and emotional strength. Her unique vision responds to the relation of animals to the human spirit that have existed since ancient times. Her figures are almost always female and range in size from the intimate to the monumental.

Dodson’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.

She uses logs of osage orange wood from her grandfather’s farm in Illinois, and ash, cherry, locust and maple from New England.

Dodson has worked in a series using an elephant headed goddess to explore female figureheads in positions of power. Recently, Dodson created large scale outdoor pieces, engaging in a public dialogue about her work. The site became a more prevalent theme. Today, Dodson has returned to creating statement pieces such as a cardinal goddess for the women of the Catholic Church who aspire to be ordained and Madam President- a monument to the first female president of the USA.

Bio

Donna Dodson is an American sculptor who has exhibited her artwork around the world. Dodson has completed successful residencies in Verbier Switzerland, Cusco Peru, Keelung Taiwan and Ringkoebing Denmark. Donna is currently a Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center and a Fellow at the St Botolph Club in Boston. Dodson’s recent show, “Sheroes” at the Boston Sculptors Gallery was met with critical acclaim. Donna was a 2022 Fulbright US Scholar at Q21/MuseumsQuartier in Vienna Austria working as an artist in residence with her host institution Tricky Women/Tricky Realities, the world’s only animation festival for women. Dodson has won grants from the Puffin Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New Hampshire Guild of Woodworkers and the George Sugarman Foundation. Her work is in the permanent collection of the World Chess Hall of Fame in St Louis Missouri, the Provincetown Art Museum, the Art Complex Museum and the Fuller Craft Museum in Massachusetts, The Noyes Art Museum in New Jersey and the Davistown Museum in Maine. Donna's work has been reviewed in the Boston Globe, Sculpture Magazine, The Daily Beast, Hyperallergic and Artnet. She is currently represented by the Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston and Los Angeles. She is a former member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery. Dodson is a graduate of Wellesley College. Donna is a freelance writer whose articles in newspapers, magazines and blogs demonstrate the economic impact and global reach of the Boston arts sector. Her recent paper, “What do we call courageous women” was presented at the Society for Classical Studies annual meeting in 2022 and was published in Queering the Amazons a special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies.

Inspirations

"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."

-Leonard Cohen

"... I think one's art goes only as far and as deep as [one's] love goes..."

-Andrew Wyeth

"art is valuable because it challenges, inspires, and enables us to see ourselves in much more interesting ways"
-Mickey Cartin

" the thing that I had to do was to ... work super hard in the hope that someday it would pay off. And in using that term I don't mean necessarily money, but just the fact that I would have more depth and dimension both as a human being and as an artist."
-Ed Paschke

“Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”
-Steve Jobs

"...remember that collecting art is an act of love. It isn’t about what you pay for a work, or how rich (or not) you become when you one day sell it, but the depth of your enjoyment in the time you live with it."
-Abigail R. Esman

"[Patronage] is a gift, in the form of money, in exchange for [my] gift, in the form of music."

-Amanda Palmer

"Art is the crucial interface between the imagination and reality, the thing that makes life deeper and broader than what it might be without such insight."

-Todd Levin

"If they hadn't told me I was ugly, I would never have searched for my beauty."

-Gabourey Sidibe

"Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be."

-Clementine Paddleford

Great artists “must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.”

-Humphrey Trevelyan

"Life should be lived so vividly and intensely that thoughts of another life or of a longer life are not necessary."

-Marjory Stoneman Douglas

“When people say that poetry is a luxury, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is.” Jeannette Winterson

Artistic Process

When I start a piece of work I need to evoke such a strong feeling about each piece that I can dare to listen to the piece, to make mistakes - to just create. It is the emotional investment in the act of creation that crystallizes the work for me.

Sometimes the idea or concept comes first, and I imagine what the piece will be when completed. More often I work from intuition. Once completed I see the intentions behind the piece, or the desire from which it is born. Artists who inspire me include Jessica Stockholder and Katharina Fritsch. Stockholder uses color as a transformational visual device, changing the way we see form. Fritsch creates sculptures of sacred figures that become pop-icons through her use of color. In the same way I work with various kinds and grains of wood accented by color.

My artwork is about self expression, autobiography, and self redemption. Each sculpture is independent and heroic, but each is connected to the body of my total work. Each is made greater and honored by its association with those that have preceded it, but keeps its own sacred identity. Each reflects my realization that I am a self-made woman.

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Monday, April 8, 2013

CONVERGENCE: BOSTON SCULPTORS GALLERY EXHIBITS AT THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PLAZA

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