DONNA DODSON: Spring News

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Spring News

Friday April 24th- International Sculpture Day 2015!

International Sculpture Day, or IS Day, is an annual celebration event held worldwide on April 24 to further the ISC’s mission of advancing the creation and understanding of sculpture and its unique, vital contribution to society. IS Day will include a wide range of events, openings, educational and promotional activities around the world to include, but not limited to open day at museum/sculpture park, open studios tours, demonstrations, workshops, panels, talks, presentations, discussions, parties and openings, sculpture exhibits, shows, tours…

Please join us for our final Artist Talk and Tour in NYC: If you have missed Avian Avatars and the Myth Makers in New York City, this is the last day to meet the artists and discuss the challenges and joys of team art making. Join the dynamic collaborative, Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein for the closing events at either 5p or 7p. Walk through with artists followed by tea/coffee and conversation at The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, 1412 Broadway @ 39th St.

Sarah Cascone from Artnet and The Huffington Post, recently picked this project as her number one spring public art show in NYC, and the Nashua Telegraph published a great write up on April 2nd about our story. Dr. Jill Kiefer also posted a nice write up on her blog April 1st, What about art? Lydia Warren posted a feature story ... "...went bird-watching on Broadway" on her blog, Today's the Day I.

Monday April 27th- Launch Day of the Avian Avatars at The Muskegon Museum of Art in Michigan

Avian Avatars by The Myth Makers: Donna Dodson & Andy Moerlein

April 27, 2015 – May 1, 2016 in Muskegon MI

Avatar: a deliberate descent of a deity to Earth, an "appearance" or a "manifestation". ~Wikipedia

Since the beginning of human history cultures have identified birds as mythic and transformational. Their seasonal plumage has indicated change, signaled migration and foretold impending weather events. The Phoenix, Garuda, Horus, Ra, Thunderbird and angel iconography all address transcendence and rebirth. The world’s most symbolic birds – the Raptor, Owl, Crow, Pigeon, and Falcon - are flocking to Muskegon, Michigan, to consider our changing world.

The Muskegon Museum of Art is proud to announce that The Avian Avatars will be here on April 27, 2015, and they will reside in downtown Muskegon for a full year. Update: M-Live covered this event.

Support for this project is provided by Hooker DeJong Architects and Engineers, the Hines Corporation, Eagle Alloy, Nichols, Alcoa Corporation, Annoesjka and Alan Steinman, Jan and Chris Deur, the Community Foundation for Muskegon County, and The Cheese Lady. Additional support provided by Verplank Truck Company and the Holiday Inn Muskegon Harbor/Third Street Grill. This project has been organized by the Muskegon Museum of Art.

Each monumental bird has something to say. They speak in different voices and from unique perspectives, but this gathering of Avian Avatars raises an alarm, speaking to modern humans who should heed their varied stories about the current human impact on their changing natural world.

Get to know The Realist, The Great Spirit, The Scold, The Tourist, and the Tastemaker this year in Muskegon! Update: Brandon Champion posted a preview on M-Live April 5, 2015. The Holland Sentinel posted a preview on April 8, 2015.

Tuesday April 28th- Book release day for The Contemporary Art of Nature- Mammals by Ashley Rooney

Ashley Rooney has assembled a comprehensive international survey of contemporary artists who use animal imagery in their art work. Featuring stellar artists such as Lori Field, Amy Ross, Shelley Reed, Wendy Klemperer, Peter DeCamp Haines, Susan Jamison, Resa Blatman and Elli Crocker this anthology represents the cutting edge of painting, sculpture and drawing being made today. I was honored to be asked to contribute the introduction, and even more pleased to receive an advanced copy. This gorgeous 9"x12" full color hardcover book is a must have for all the animal lovers and art aficionados out there! Get your copy today and look for an announcement about our upcoming group show at Francesca Anderson Fine Art in Lexington with a selection of artists from the book in June.

From the Press Release: Donna Dodson is featured in Contemporary Art of Nature MAMMALS, a collection of work by 98 international artists, displaying the range of animal art created today. The book reflects the continuing dialogue artists are having with animals worldwide and increases our awareness of the natural world and its functioning. The 450 color images show traditional works to atavistic totemic approaches to the cutting edge. Materials include ceramic, bronze, textiles, paint, wood, leather, and clay, as well as 3D digital techniques. Two renowned artists introduce the book. Donna Dodson, and Carel P. Brest van Kampen.

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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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Thursday, April 2, 2015

Spring News

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