DONNA DODSON: End of Year Reflections and the Year Ahead

Thursday, December 31, 2020

End of Year Reflections and the Year Ahead

As we near the end of 2020, it occurs to me that in spite of the disruptions of COVID-19 and the global pandemic, I participated in several international exhibitions and online programs. I also forged some exciting new collaborations. Below is a brief summary of 2020 and a look ahead to 2021...

I created a video for International Sculpture Day in April, A Studio Visit with Donna Dodson, that summarizes my work in process and highlights some of my previous work. Thanks to Andy Moerlein for the shooting, staging and fantastic video editing. Check out his IS Day Studio Visit too.

I participated in two international virtual exhibitions: one in Peru and one in Switzerland. The Peruvian show, La Primera Exposicion Virtual Collectiva is an online exhibition that was created in honor of ROLDAN BRAULIO ALVARADO MECICOMER, a well-known and beloved art professor and sculptor at ESCUELA SUPERIOR DE FORMACIÓN ARTÍSTICA PÚBLICA DE BELLAS ARTES “VÍCTOR MOREY PEÑA” DE IQUITOS Peru. (Look for Andy Moerlein's work in the exhibition too)

The Great Pause, a covid response to the pandemic by Verbier 3D Foundation in Switzerland features images of new work by artists who have been part of this residency program (including Andy Moerlein), the highest altitude sculpture park in the world. Each artist was asked to send in photographs of current work, and a written statement about how Covid is shaping their practice. The images and texts were printed and mounted on the side of the bench platforms along the hiking trail that runs through the sculpture park. I sent in an image of the Alpha Female and this statement:

"I am personally affected by the virus, and it has given new context and meaning to my work. I am making a new series that is based on Amazons, the ancient warrior women. I am re-imagining Durer's Four horsemen of the Apocalypse as Amazon Warriors. Given the current pandemic, this body of work is speaking to the current moment.

We are witnessing women leaders of the world, who are battling against the virus in their countries, win with truth, decisiveness, intelligence, and compassion. Globally, we must come to new understanding of women. Our survival depends on it."

I am currently a Visiting Scholar at Brandeis University Women's Studies Research Center for 2019-2021. Last year was focused on research and this year will result in creating a new body of work that will open at the Boston Sculptors Gallery in May 2021. My project is focused on the Amazons in ancient, modern and contemporary art history including warrior women from around the world such as Hua Mulan, Rani of Jhansi, Tomiris and amazons in pop culture such as The Wakanda and Wonder Woman. I am completing this series by interpreting Durer's "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" as Amazon warriors in my woodcarvings. I have gotten some good press so far, especially "Donna Dodson is Making An Army, and Why Not? by Jennifer Oladipo in her new online platform, The Chord.

Leave it to Seagull Cinderella to attract one of the most unexpected and ultimately wonderful experiences in 2020. She, and I, participated in a cowboy boot commercial, written, produced and directed by the one and only Jeremiah Craig. Check out his video "Simple and Sophisticated Ostrich Boots from Rujo." Hats off to Jeremiah for doing some top shelf investigative journalism and inviting me to reveal the uncut version of the story.

A couple of followups and footnotes to my previous posts from 2020:

Interpreting the Natural: Contemporary Visions of Scholars' Rocks was exhibited at the Korean Cultural Center in NYC, October 21-Nov 30, 2020. This exhibition featured artwork by ten award-winning artists: Laura Cannamela, Mark Cooper, Furen Dai, Christopher Frost, JooLee Kang, Woomin Kim, Susan Meyer, Andy Moerlein, Laura Moriarty, and Elisa Pritzker alongside traditional stones from the collection of Thomas Elias and Hiromi Nakaoji and the renowned scholar Kemin Hu. Due to COVID-19 all of the programming was recorded live and posted to youtube. Check out the website for all of the links to videos of the artist talks that featured famous experts, scholars, collectors and many generous souls who joined into the conversations and enhanced the community that we created online.

News from the Myth Makers: Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein:

Look for new work from this dynamic duo in Camden NJ, Atlanta GA and Anchorage AK in 2021! Coming up in March 2021 at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, Gainesville, Georgia: Flannery's Peacock, a tribute to Flannery O'Connor and her beloved peacocks. Following that, The Phoenix Festival will premiere in April 2021 as part of "A New View Camden" the Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge to address illegal dumping in Camden New Jersey. And in June 2021, look for a giant pair of fabled magpies at the Alaska Botanical Garden in Anchorage, Alaska. For more info, visit our blog.

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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, December 31, 2020

End of Year Reflections and the Year Ahead

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