DONNA DODSON: Four Poems by K. Melchor Quick Hall

Friday, May 28, 2021

Four Poems by K. Melchor Quick Hall

Four Poems

by K. Melchor Quick Hall

written for mothers, daughters, wives, and lady lovers

especially intersex, trans, masculine, and chosen family

in harmony with animals, plants, natural elements, and wilderness

for girls and women who are/were boyish or manly

who have been made feminine in the face of myopic visions

we need your queer courage and strength

to struggle together in this fight that requires a womanish touch

to disrupt capitalist-driven inequitably uneven apocalypse

and to aim for fertile feral feminist futures

Alpha Female by Donna Dodson

1. Alpha

Strong Women.

leagues of auxiliary essential workers

wearing practical shoes

long days, muscular legs

strong and feminine

warrior and princess

civility in civics

patriotically underpaid

Sculpt Resistance.

nursing nations

refusing milking

chest plates

breast aches

women’s stance

looking toward horizons

insisting on humanity

Animate History.

part eagle, part cow

eating last

feeding others

body foraging

feeding bodies

making sustenance, taking substance

markings of a warrior goddess

Perform Futures.

performing politeness

serving country

imagining non-country

bird’s view of borders

pacifist’s view of conflict

embracing animality

embodying an alternative

L to R: Black Panther and Cybele by Donna Dodson

2a. Black Panther

Strong Women.

women warriors

resting on thrones

galvanizing troops

afros puffed

activism righteous

seated on buses

weary and woke

Sculpt Resistance.

wheelchairs

sitting short and strong

weakness misperceived

aged wisdom

connecting women’s bodies

naming lesbianism

sharing humanity

Animate History.

part panther

also black-coated leopards

also central american jaguars

part comic, part savior

archival margins

dahomey women warriors

re-captured in capitalist cinema

Perform Futures.

performing sankofa

recapturing ten-point platforms

examining archived throne photos

a summer uprising

an era of good trouble

disproportionate harm

radical care and love futures

L to R: Black Panther and Cybele by Donna Dodson

2b. Cybele

Strong Women.

mountain goddess

feral feline companion

crazy cat woman

fertile protectress

commanding chariot

spring sacrifices

queer jealous lovers

Sculpt Resistance.

rejecting religion

making pagan rituals

defending nature

like indigenous water warriors

like land defenders

hovering over and rooting in

our inter-being

Animate History.

part mountain, part earth mother

committed to sisterhood

women’s villages

giving birth to women wonders

matriarchal indigeneity

indignant martyrdom

toxic murders

Perform Futures.

pursuing rights of nature

engaging rites of passage

chariot transformed to hoverboard

human view to goddess view

earthbound to universal

embracing our plant side

queering connection

Lakshmibai: The Rani of Jhansi by Donna Dodson

3. Laxmibai

Strong Women.

queens and goddesses

mutiny leaders

brahman girls

tomboys

martial artists

sword fighters

horse riders

Sculpt Resistance.

resisting bio-nationalism

refusing heir making

adopting boys

or girls that are tomboys

or girls that were once boys

or girls that are also boys

water more fluid than blood

Animate History.

weightlifter and wrestler

raising baby, lifting baby

carrying child, curling child

rejecting family

wrestling with caste

adopting alternatives

biological transgressions

Perform Futures.

performing intersex

gender transcendence

imagining a non-binary world

animal’s view of humanity

not genitals’ view of role

embracing human and plant families

embodying wholeness

4. Feminist STEAM Intersections

Strong Women.

sculptor-curator-presenter

animator-professor-painter

performer-artist-weightlifter

mathematician-poet-scholar

physicist-author-feminist

intersectional steam

woven futures

queer connections

Sculpt Resistance.

trained but not disciplined

artistic but improperly framed

un-disciplining

re-writing archives

crossing boundaries

ms. behaving

an order for disorder

Animate History.

carving wood

curating collaboration

designing animation

writing words

performing goddess

talking cosmologies

imagining pluriverse

Perform Futures.

embracing chaos

speaking out, sitting in

co-creating transdisciplinary futures

embracing dark matters

feral feminists

rematriating to dust

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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 Resident Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center and a Visual Art Fellow at the St Botolph Club in Boston. Dodson’s recent show, “The Amazons Among Us” 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 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 a member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery, the nation’s only sculpture cooperative that maintains its own gallery space. Dodson is a graduate of Wellesley College. She enjoys public speaking, and has been a guest speaker at conferences throughout North America. Donna is a freelance writer whose articles in newspapers, magazines and blogs demonstrate the economic impact and global reach of the arts sector. Her recent paper, “What do we call courageous women” was presented at the Society for Classical Studies annual meeting in 2022 and is pending publication in a special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies, Queering the Amazons.

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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Friday, May 28, 2021

Four Poems by K. Melchor Quick Hall

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