DONNA DODSON: Artists call upon the ancients at Boston Sculptors Gallery

Thursday, May 27, 2021

Artists call upon the ancients at Boston Sculptors Gallery

ART REVIEW

Artists call upon the ancients at Boston Sculptors Gallery

By Cate McQuaid Globe Correspondent,Updated May 25, 2021, 12:01 p.m.

Installation view of Donna Dodson's "Amazons Among Us" show at Boston Sculptors Gallery. DONNA DODSON

Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein’s sculptures kindle an ancient reverence for nature. Dodson’s work echoes the sacred totems of societies attuned to the earth’s cycles, threats, and gifts. Moerlein approaches the sublime through sticks and stones. The artists, who are married, collaborate on public art projects as the Myth Makers. They also work individually, and now each has a show at Boston Sculptors Gallery.

The four wooden icons in Dodson’s “Amazons Among Us” nod to Albrecht Dürer’s engraving “The Four Horsemen” from “The Apocalypse” series. She bases these female figures on mythological women warriors in Africa, India, ancient Greece and Rome, and on her own great-aunt Alice, a soldier in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps during World War II. They have the heads of beasts and the bodies of sturdy women, inscribed with tattoos with mythic meaning.

Donna Dodson's "Alpha Female," 2020. BRIAN WILSON/COURTESY DONNA DODSON

Unlike Dürer’s threatening quartet, who hurtle toward societal destruction, these figures are rock steady and proud. They hold the space for work about women warriors by other artists Dodson has invited. It’s like a chapel dedicated to ferocious protection and love.

Moerlein also welcomes other artists into dialogue with the works in his show — poems, art, and bonsai that reflect his questions about how to partner with the earth. His pieces, large and small, say so much on their own.

Andy Moerlein's "Elegy for the Earth, 2021. BRIAN WILSON/COURTESY ANDY MOERLEIN

He was inspired by the ancient Chinese practice of placing a stone on a pedestal for contemplation. In addition to rocky shapes he fashions himself, he showcases wood, calling to mind the strict yet wild formality of a bonsai garden. In “Elegy for the Earth” a stone form painted audacious peach flies cloudlike above a trio of blue-painted branches that rise and arc as if wind-whipped.

Moerlein sets a gorgeous chunk of spalted rock maple on a painted plywood base, creating tension in “Seeking Vein — Finding Heart.” Deliciously twisty and rutted, both read like mountain landscapes. The maple is natural and unpainted; the plywood is engineered and covered in red, green, and yellow. Yet one mirrors the other. As all Moerlein’s works do, it reminds viewers that we are one with and reflect the natural world. Whether we like it or not.

Andy Moerlein's "Seeking Vein – Finding Heart," 2021. BRIAN WILSON/COURTESY ANDY MOERLEIN

DONNA DODSON: AMAZONS AMONG US

ANDY MOERLEIN: WOOD STONE POEM

At Boston Sculptors Gallery, 486 Harrison Ave., through June 6. 617-482-7781, www.bostonsculptors.com

Cate McQuaid can be reached at catemcquaid@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter @cmcq.

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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, May 27, 2021

Artists call upon the ancients at Boston Sculptors Gallery

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