DONNA DODSON: February 2016

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

February News

“The Chinese Zodiac Series” by Donna Dodson

Curated by Cathryn Griffith, The St. Botolph Club

199 Commonwealth Ave, Boston: 617-536-7570

Exhibition Dates: February 24^th-March 25^th 2016

Opening Reception: Wednesday, February 24^th 5:30p-7p

Installation of "Zodiac" by Donna Dodson at the St. Botolph Club in Boston

"The signs of the Zodiac are Karmic Patterns; the Planets are the Looms; the Will is the Weaver."
-Edgar Cayce

In Donna Dodson’s premiere show at The St. Botolph’s Club, she brings together her signature vocabulary of animal headed mythological figures with her favorite material- wood. Dodson has created a new body of work called The Chinese Zodiac for this exhibition. This references the twelve animals that are associated with the ancient system of belief in China. Unlike the Western zodiac, where each sign is associated with the month a person was born, the Eastern zodiac is based on birth years from the beginning of time to the present day. A different animal is associated with each year and its attributes characterize that year. The order of the animals is fixed and repeats every 12 years. With the exception of Ai Wei Wei’s “Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads,” a large scale bronze public art installation that toured the world, the Chinese zodiac has not been revisited by contemporary artists.

Historically artists such as Audubon, Bernini and Hokusai have brought realistic images of animals to life with stylizations that resist anthropomorphism. But in Dodson’s work, she sees the animal head and body language of her figures as representations of certain personality types that evoke larger than life characters. The animal symbols in the zodiac seek to explain personal fortune and global events based on animal characteristics and their larger conceptual influences on human nature. There are twelve animals in the Chinese Zodiac: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit/hare, dragon, snake, horse, goat/sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig/boar. The fact that Dodson’s animal heads are attached to human bodies, reveals her vision of inner resonance and outer force of will that the Chinese Zodiac implies.

Update: Holly Camero featured Andy Moerlein and I on Wicked local. We are the talk of the town. Denishe also featured us on her blog, The Maynard Grapevine. Art New England interviewed Andy Moerlein and I about our recent trip to China on behalf of the Boston Sculptors Gallery (see below).

Boston Sculptors Gallery starts the New Year with a visit to China

Boston Sculptors Gallery members Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein along with Carole Feuerman of the Carole A. Feuerman Sculpture Foundation and Michael Manjarris representing Sculpture for New Orleans, were invited by Gertrud Aeschlimann of Art-st-Urban to attend the Changchun World Sculpture Park Conference held in Changchun China from January 10th to January 12th 2016 and to participate in the first preliminary meeting of the International Sculpture Park Union. All three organizations became members of the Union.

During the conference, representatives of the new member organizations visited the Changchun World Sculpture Park – the largest sculpture park in the world with a work of art from every country. Dodson and Moerlein gave a presentation on the Boston Sculptors Gallery’s recent public art projects: highlighting the unique ways this cooperative gallery has initiated major public art projects in both public, urban and private historic settings. Likewise, Carole Feuerman presented information about the International Sculpture Center and the Carole Feuerman Foundation highlighting the latter's recent international group exhibition "Mixing Medias." Michael Manjarris discussed the objectives and outcomes of his large scale public art project, "Sculpture for New Orleans." Gary Garrido Schneider from Grounds for Sculpture highlighted the recent initiatives they are undertaking to address cultural tourism, and Charles Haude from the J Seward Johnson Foundation featured images of their recent monumental installations. Each new member organization presented the challenges they are facing and proposed new solutions that can be realized by working together in the ISPU.

Part of the conference was the adoption of the International Sculpture Park Union constitution, as well as the elected leadership of the Union. The first Sculpture Park Union president Chinese Wang Mingshan (Changchun World Sculpture Park curator) handed over the union leadership to Gertrud Aeschlimann, representing the Art-St-Urban Sculpture Park in Lucerne, Switzerland, while the Union's Secretary General was elected to the Chinese representative Wang Xuezhan.

The International Sculpture Park Union was founded in 2014, on September 4th in Changchun, China. The founding document was signed by 5 sculpture parks: Changchun WorldSculpture Park (People's Republic), Art-St-Urban (Switzerland), Beddington Art Galleries & Gardens (France), Chianti Sculpture Park (Italy), Pedvāle Open-Air Art Museum (Latvia).

Grounds for Sculpture, represented by Gary Garrido Schenider, Sculpture for New Orleans, represented by Michael Manjarris, The Carole Feuerman Foundation, represented by Carole Feuerman, The J Seward Johnson Atelier, represented by Charles Haude and The Juming Museum in Taiwan, represented by Dr. Shun-Ling Wu, were sworn in as the newest members of the ISPU alongside the Boston Sculptors Gallery represented by Dodson and Moerlein during this ISPU conference.

The International Sculpture Park Union's objectives are to:

* To promote and facilitate cooperation between the private and public organizations which share common objectives with the association so that they can effectively cooperate in the global, national and regional level to discuss common problems and search for solutions;

* To strengthen the friendly cooperation and mobility between sculpture parks around the world to promote their development;

* To promote the exchange of information;

* To encourage and promote the creation of different studies aimed at improving communication and cooperation between sculpture parks.

The main union activities are exhibitions exchange, exchange of information and the association's promotion of seminars and conferences to share experiences sculpture park management and marketing, as well as share practical and theoretical experience with countries wishing to build a sculpture park.

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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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Tuesday, February 16, 2016

February News