So the years I lived in Michigan, people had seen "Objects: USA." [Laughs.]. And then, of course, the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] was formed and the Percent for Art programs. I was going to say, it doesn't sound tropical. MS. SHEA: And what was the reaction of the public to the exhibition? Those are again, those are positive, and these are linear. But what was interesting is that I did explore the domestic landscape. MS. OKA DONER: Yes, much smaller. And I know when something's done. And these floating bubbles are real life forms. New York , NY 10010, Washington, D.C. Headquarters and Research Center. MS. SHEA: And did you have a studio on the campus? "Oh," she said, "You haven't been in it in years. MS. SHEA: And wonderful to look at. I mean, think about that. MS. OKA DONER: It's easier to keep indoors clean than outdoors clean. I felt that if women were, quote-unquote, relegated to the home, why not make it fabulous? It's a limited edition. It gets caught in the tangles and moves across the dense surfaces as if they were draperythe luster is always changing. Her name was Gertrude Heller Oka. MS. SHEA: Really? Were they cast iron? MS. SHEA: But you're actually going back and forth between time zones. It's like layers of paper. MS. SHEA: Once again, this is Josephine Shea interviewing the very patient Michele Oka Doner at the artist's studio in New York City on Saturday, November the 17th, for the Archives of American Art. MS. OKA DONER: you could spend the whole afternoon. She has elegantly translated these rudimentary forms into real objects of art."[24]. "Sometimes a crumb falls from the table of joy, sometimes a bone is flung. It's really terrific. Or how did that relationship develop? This handmade staircase was in place when Oka Doner and her husband bought the loft. Unless you were wealthy, you didn't own any. A cabinet inset in a wall displays one of her armless Tattooed Dolls, part of an early series inspired by the pricked surfaces and torso shapes of coral. And that's what those are. Id end up each day, if I was lucky, with maybe six or seven pieces [for Miami]. Every time you have guests, you could bring out your signature beakers, you know. So I said, how much? And instead of using the Greek and cantis [ph] and more sort of generic symbols, I used . MS. OKA DONER: And suffering from having the, some kind of weight on me that I couldn't possibly remove. And we're just about to return that to open space, which had become the boys' room. MS. OKA DONER: Then they were even mad at Philip Pearlstein for doing the figure. It was a beautifully edited, very unusual modernist home built 1951 in the new way, meaning there was everything built in, sliding doors, closed off. Funding for this interview was provided by the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America. It's not like you have an idea and you send it to a fabricator and they make it. Okay. Okay. MS. SHEA: All one you got more of a texture, more of a , MS. SHEA: Yeah, that's very interesting. Its what made the lush vegetation thrive and drew crowds to the cleared-away brush and to the beaches. It's used differently. MS. SHEA: [Laughs.] She began work on A Walk on the Beach in 1991 and didnt finish until 2010, because each time the airport expanded the concourse, officials asked her to keep going. There was one big empty plaster column, so I went and referenced that same book. And there was a magnificent "Reef Bowl," one that was huge, which I have a picture of. MS. OKA DONER: Yes. MS. SHEA: Move forward. Why did the planetarium . And my older sister was very talented and difficult to follow. They'd teach me and I'd make it myself, or with them. It was really wonderful. Her work is in collections worldwide, notably the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cooper-Hewitt, La Muse Des Artes Dcoratifs, the Louvre, the Wolfsoniana in Genoa, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Virginia Museum, the St. Louis Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Yale Art Gallery, Princeton University Art Museum, and the Perez Art Museum Miami. I think the further and further segmentation has not benefited any of the different divisions. MS. OKA DONER: And I was in Chelsea today, and it's such a strange thing because there's no longer any consensus on what art is, and many galleries have artists who've taken photographs of photographs. And that was the show at the Detroit Institute of Arts that we've discussed, in 1977. That's a very simple, small project, and that was my experiment with would these forms work in terrazzo as well as cement. And then I have a wonderful image in that one of the American eagle holding the tablets, one-half in each of its talons, which came from a book called The Torah Treasury. No more stories to load; check out The Study. And we were in our mid-30s, my husband and myself, and we felt this was the time. There's maybe one or two nights a year I wish I had a real reading light, when I'm having dinner by myself. But sometimes, you know, there's all these books out that I haven't read, called "The End of History." It was exciting . MS. OKA DONER: And I don't like cords, and I didn't want to build soffits and spoil the purity and integrity of the room. And so I said, would you show my work? Maybe people are becoming more conscious. MS. SHEA: About the Spaceship Earth, which is an interesting way, I think, to think about things. Certain times of year there are seaweeds, other times there is . She played piano; he played violin. MS. SHEA: They loved it? These things are 500 years old. MS. OKA DONER: So it's the science of design. I didn't know that. "Sculptress carved her niche in life. MS. OKA DONER: But that was the kind of answers. MS. OKA DONER: No. Or . MS. OKA DONER: you know, I have these three Science Benches [1989-1990] in Ann Arbor that they asked me to do, and they're right in front of his Natural Science Building. The minute I got to college, though, I began to work very seriously. MS. OKA DONER: I think it's I'm trying to remember, now that you mention it, how that's laid out, because you can walk through the museum to the executive offices behind a closed door. I wouldnt make things the same today. Paul Karasik, a leading authority in the financial industry, has devoted 18 years to helping financial industry professionals achieve their goals. The Sacramento. Or how did this particular piece come about? Recent solo exhibitions include, "Close Your Physical Eye," [31] Manitoga Arts Center, Garrison, New York (2019); "New Works on Paper," Marlborough Gallery, New York (2019),[32] " "How I Caught A Swallow in Mid-Air," at the Perez Art Museum Miami (2016),[33] "Mysterium" at David Gill Gallery, London (2016),[34] "Feasting on Bark," Marlborough Gallery, New York (2015),[35] "The Shaman's Hut," Christie's gallery, New York (2014),[36] "Neuration of the Genus," Dieu Donne Gallery, New York, NY,[37] where she was interviewed by the artist Adam Fuss,[38] and "Exhaling Gnosis"[39] at Miami Biennale (2011). MS. OKA DONER: They don't have flexibility. MS. SHEA: That's a wonderful combination of symbols from all of the different types of cultures. Born and raised in Miami Beach, Oka Doner is the granddaughter of painter Samuel Heller. But . And I've just gone back to printmaking. They're when you spread out when the tree spreads out to make the roots underground, you know how it makes this wonderful kind of accordion movement of in and out all the way around. I would have kept that, but the parchment was so torn you couldn't sit, so I had no choice. I didn't realize. In Europe, I had seen what I call the room as a work of art. I knew them my whole life too. MS. OKA DONER: Well, most people wouldn't know, but I used to go there and come out, and there would be the fountain with the Milles sculpture and there would be beautiful reeds growing in a pond. It's sad, but it's a nice remembrance. I'm looking at almost a person height of what would you call, they're almost rough, small, stick-like or coral-like strands that come together. A Death Mask, one of her first works, was selected as the cover of Generation,[9] the University's avant garde journal, as campus unrest over the Vietnam war escalated. MS. SHEA: That's interesting, because it was supposedly so experimental or so breaking the mold, but then , MS. OKA DONER: No, it was breaking the mold away from what the last , MS. SHEA: had been, the last didactic people had said you have to do. It's very exciting. So I'm working on both the Michigan project and Miami Airport at the same time. Of course they've sold a thousand of them now. MS. OKA DONER: I think so. MS. SHEA: [Laughs.] So I was admonished. I'd never really understood how dirty urban life was . 750 9th Street, NW It really was very vital in the '20s and '30s, the Scarab Club, all the Pewabic tiles everywhere. MS. SHEA: But do you think many people think about that? So it looked richer. MS. SHEA: You got a good chuckle for that in Grand Rapids. MS. OKA DONER: I had a Rikers mount very early on with a wonderful shell collection from Sanibel Island [Florida] going back to the days when Sanibel Island wasn't connected to the mainland and one had to take a ferry. I think it should be required reading. I feed it well and I bathe and I have a wonderful meal and that's that. I'll have to, you know . MS. OKA DONER: And then they get cleaned. MS. OKA DONER: I couldn't relate, so I made really what they're called, Burning Branches [1980-1989]. And do we call those stalactites or stalagmites? We promised eternal devotion. MS. OKA DONER: They were sort of porcelain, I called them tattoo dolls. It allowed me to take everything I had learned my first 18 years and absorb it and process it and come out, emerge from this period with things ready to move forward. Her Palm Books, produced in varying dimensions on abaca paper, are little meditations on design in nature, each page showing a different configuration of the palm leaf, crisscrossed or fanning open like a starreminding us of the connections between the terrestrial and the celestial. MICHELE OKA DONER (b. MS. OKA DONER: Yes. I found the birch trees. And then he painted frescoes in convents upstate New York before he had a family and went into business. So there's quite a document . Was it an engineer type of person or was it a marketing person? And I enjoyed making them. I said, no, no, I passed it. If you remove all the things that are on the rolls, what you'd see is the plywood under the second floor. She said, "I have memories within that come out of the materials that went to make me. We all did. I believe that the ancients, when they said you're on my wavelength, there was a wavelength. [Master of Fine Arts], they assume you're going to teach. MS. OKA DONER: Functional. And it was a very strange and kind of ridiculous paper. It's the largest state library in New Jersey, at Tom's River. Like the Miami Beach book, it took 12 years to write. [20], Oka Doner moved to Detroit and exhibited at the Gertrude Kasle Gallery in 1971. (1968), was Alumna-in-Residence (1990), received the Distinguished Alumna Award from the School of Art (1994) and was a Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker (2008). ], MS. SHEA: This is another type of work. I think you need a lot of energy, is what I'm saying, to work. MS. SHEA: [Laughs.] They liked the idea of integrating bronze. MS. SHEA: And you do a lot of travel, it seems to me. MS. SHEA: Yeah, bits back together again. And they did. MS. SHEA: And then so you'll recite the poem? The structure has an internal irrigation system to support connecting and adjacent plants. Right now, while many advisors continue to limit face-to-face meetings with wholesalers, the inside team possesses an enormous opportunity to drive new sales. I was a teaching fellow. Her public she prefers Lewis Mumfords term civic artworks had something of a domino effect.One featuring cast-bronze sculptures embedded in the floor of the Evanston, Illinois, public library, for instance, begat another, for the Sacramento Central Library. And of course my father was a judge, so that was even more exciting too to come back to that part of my childhood in some way. MS. SHEA: [Laughs.] When I movedfrom Miamito Michigan in 1963, I hadspentmany summersinEurope, and I had seen what I call the room as a work of art, she says. MS. OKA DONER: Yes. And that's a bluish background, because I did sky. It was his series. MS. SHEA: I was going to say, extremely progressive. Did you ever go up to Canada? MS. OKA DONER: I think different times I'm interested in different things. And then that you just happened to be staying there and look out the window from . "The curious tattooed porcelain pieces of Doner are rather disturbing truncated body parts, as if eaten away by some leper. It's very hard to tell. Do you have a favorite or do you love them all? Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. MS. OKA DONER: So once I did that, Miami Airport saw it, and so they evolved. And it wasn't so long before that the school of architecture was in the school of engineering. MS. OKA DONER: Just the same way people want the new. MS. OKA DONER: And I met them both when I was young and lived in Detroit. And did your family stay there because I know that you have a lot of Michigan connections. It's a red wax. MS. OKA DONER: Well, it's okay. Well, one of the first things I did when I moved to Ann Arbor, is I set up a tour, and they gave them in those days, of the Rouge plant. And your first, the exhibition that you said you started with John Neff. MS. OKA DONER: Well, it's pure yellowish, and what the white is, is a pigment that I bang up. "Artists Whose Work Doesn't Hang on Walls. I just won an Intermodal Center there, so it seems I'll be there at least five to seven more years working, working in Michigan, and possibly another commission in Ann Arbor as well as Grand Rapids. They're so fragile. MS. OKA DONER: Lots of rootedness, lots of connections, lots of music, lots of stories. She maintains a home and studio in And I had never seen industry and machines in process. MS. SHEA: And how do you feel about that? 
In 1981, Oka Doner moved to New York City and embarked on a series of public art installations. It was the first of many installations that shed pedestals and traditional ways of displaying sculpture. Were you a part of as in school, were you part of a gallery show? Is each one individual? [Laughs.]. I laid it in in sort of geological time; took me time, too. MS. SHEA: I don't think one would have tuned that in. It's from Michigan. MS. SHEA: [Laughs.] MS. SHEA: And then I wonder which one did the cars. And they were slow to take to the idea. MS. OKA DONER: No. MS. OKA DONER: Yes, I had an older sister who I followed and a younger sister who had to follow the two of us. You know, I wouldn't use turquoise, let's say, in Ocean Branch, and I wouldn't use this deep, dark aggregate in Miami. To them, it wasnt art, it wasnt design, she says. MS. OKA DONER: or I went into a smaller unit with a group of girls and a housemother. MS. OKA DONER: It gives it a depth, and it's not so harsh. And no, it was a very unusual thing to do. And the moons, all of these every day in about '86, '87, The New York Times had these extraordinary pictures of craters and shapes. MS. OKA DONER: We knew it wasn't a mockingbird. And that was around the time that was before 9/11, but they still had magnometers and were checking people with guns and knives coming in. And I think that it's just instinctive. Perusing the chairs in the Egyptian galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, their seats inlaid with ivory, bone and ebony, affected her thinking. And I happened to find a photograph of my school in the national publication. We interviewed her in her loft in SoHo where she lives with her husband, and, until they grew up, her two sons. The figure was dead. So when you moved to New York, did you move to this particular studio or have you moved around? MS. SHEA: Sounds like. JOSEPHINE. MS. OKA DONER: That is mother of pearl in lacquer. And he was the first psychiatrist in Miami Beach. It was my Mother's Day present. MS. SHEA: You would be relatively close. The work now stretches a mile and a quarter and encompasses thousands of unique bronze sculptures inlaid in a terrazzo floor along with a sprinkling of mother-of-pearl, which Oka Doner explains does double duty, evoking sea foam and serving as a framing device. WebMichele Oka Doner and her husband Fred opened their stunning SoHo loft for an evening of music featuring artist William Kentridge and The Knights, the brilliant New York based orchestral. MS. OKA DONER: Yes, we had fabulous Eucalyptus trees, and on quiet afternoons we'd sit there and just peel. Okay, I see. MS. OKA DONER: Yes, and they began based on nature. Yes. Because the car would be so heavy. I hadn't thought about that. Being down, scrunched over, so to speak. Absorbing and growing and enjoying what I was doing. Oka Doner participated in a Manupelli experimental film, a "Map Read" performance with art drawing instructor Al Loving and Judsonite dancer Steve Paxton as well as several "Happenings." She paused and her answer took us back to the postwar period, that gray time during the Cold War: My mother was glamorous. At 4:00 I wouldn't start an intense project. MS. OKA DONER: And then I went back to full-time work in my own studio. And I wondered if you went back and reread books. So I'll read Mahfouz on Palace Walk [Najib Mahfuz; Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, c1989], Palace Dream, on living in Egypt. . And so we just took the risk, and it was a huge risk. I'm guessing, when you collected them were they dried or were they still green? MS. OKA DONER: There's three pieces because you couldn't get a 10-foot in diameter bench in the freight elevator or you couldn't crane it. MS. SHEA: And I guess they're still making discoveries in . She didnt want to get dirty, Oka Doner recalls. And so I liked to do the lectures that they gave in this school, which I didn't attend. And I do my best work early and usually by four in the afternoon. Ours was a curated home. This is also the case with a group of striped, armless (and sometimes headless) figures with staffs, all of them banded like zebra-striped shells. And then in the '50s she went to Germany when Rosenthal did the Raymond Lowey Centennial 2000 and bought a set of that, which was so unusual. It's on the corner of Filbert and Juniper, so I used the filbert nut and the juniper sprig of berries and leaves. MS. OKA DONER: Probably not. MS. OKA DONER: Well, I'm not making one easily identifiable, commodifiable thing, which is what a gallery needs. We all made so many promises. MS. OKA DONER: There's porcelain, white stoneware and terra cotta. That's very provincial, so everybody's drawing from a larger well, a deeper well, and that's probably very good since you can just get on a plane and be someplace. Unfortunately, much of this potential is never realized because the inside sales team has not been properly trained and coached. MS. OKA DONER: I had the paperback, which we're ruining, . MS. SHEA: Right. MS. SHEA: And how did you both think of the idea and then how did you present it to them? MS. OKA DONER: Yes, a stanchion, back to the stanchion. Patrick Lannan came and bought. MS. SHEA: So it's limited. See, I'm making the model for a Christofle vase. I had a wonderful teacher. I didn't want to drink that much. MS. OKA DONER: And I studied also with Dr. Spink, both of whom I'm still in touch with all these years. You leave before dawn and get back, it's dark. I knew a few people from Ann Arbor and they were living on the Bowery and they were drinking and partying. So let's keep our fingers crossed. MS. SHEA: And did you as you were growing up kind of go back and forth between Miami and New York? And so each one is unique. 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In 1981, Oka Doner moved to New York City and embarked on a series of public art installations. It was the first of many installations that shed pedestals and traditional ways of displaying sculpture. Were you a part of as in school, were you part of a gallery show? Is each one individual? [Laughs.]. I laid it in in sort of geological time; took me time, too. MS. SHEA: I don't think one would have tuned that in. It's from Michigan. MS. SHEA: [Laughs.] MS. SHEA: And then I wonder which one did the cars. And they were slow to take to the idea. MS. OKA DONER: No. MS. OKA DONER: Yes, I had an older sister who I followed and a younger sister who had to follow the two of us. You know, I wouldn't use turquoise, let's say, in Ocean Branch, and I wouldn't use this deep, dark aggregate in Miami. To them, it wasnt art, it wasnt design, she says. MS. OKA DONER: or I went into a smaller unit with a group of girls and a housemother. MS. OKA DONER: It gives it a depth, and it's not so harsh. And no, it was a very unusual thing to do. And the moons, all of these every day in about '86, '87, The New York Times had these extraordinary pictures of craters and shapes. MS. OKA DONER: We knew it wasn't a mockingbird. And that was around the time that was before 9/11, but they still had magnometers and were checking people with guns and knives coming in. And I think that it's just instinctive. Perusing the chairs in the Egyptian galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, their seats inlaid with ivory, bone and ebony, affected her thinking. And I happened to find a photograph of my school in the national publication. We interviewed her in her loft in SoHo where she lives with her husband, and, until they grew up, her two sons. The figure was dead. So when you moved to New York, did you move to this particular studio or have you moved around? MS. SHEA: Sounds like. JOSEPHINE. MS. OKA DONER: That is mother of pearl in lacquer. And he was the first psychiatrist in Miami Beach. It was my Mother's Day present. MS. SHEA: You would be relatively close. The work now stretches a mile and a quarter and encompasses thousands of unique bronze sculptures inlaid in a terrazzo floor along with a sprinkling of mother-of-pearl, which Oka Doner explains does double duty, evoking sea foam and serving as a framing device. WebMichele Oka Doner and her husband Fred opened their stunning SoHo loft for an evening of music featuring artist William Kentridge and The Knights, the brilliant New York based orchestral. MS. OKA DONER: Yes, we had fabulous Eucalyptus trees, and on quiet afternoons we'd sit there and just peel. Okay, I see. MS. OKA DONER: Yes, and they began based on nature. Yes. Because the car would be so heavy. I hadn't thought about that. Being down, scrunched over, so to speak. Absorbing and growing and enjoying what I was doing. Oka Doner participated in a Manupelli experimental film, a "Map Read" performance with art drawing instructor Al Loving and Judsonite dancer Steve Paxton as well as several "Happenings." She paused and her answer took us back to the postwar period, that gray time during the Cold War: My mother was glamorous. At 4:00 I wouldn't start an intense project. MS. OKA DONER: And then I went back to full-time work in my own studio. And I wondered if you went back and reread books. So I'll read Mahfouz on Palace Walk [Najib Mahfuz; Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, c1989], Palace Dream, on living in Egypt. . And so we just took the risk, and it was a huge risk. I'm guessing, when you collected them were they dried or were they still green? MS. OKA DONER: There's three pieces because you couldn't get a 10-foot in diameter bench in the freight elevator or you couldn't crane it. MS. SHEA: And I guess they're still making discoveries in . She didnt want to get dirty, Oka Doner recalls. And so I liked to do the lectures that they gave in this school, which I didn't attend. And I do my best work early and usually by four in the afternoon. Ours was a curated home. This is also the case with a group of striped, armless (and sometimes headless) figures with staffs, all of them banded like zebra-striped shells. And then in the '50s she went to Germany when Rosenthal did the Raymond Lowey Centennial 2000 and bought a set of that, which was so unusual. It's on the corner of Filbert and Juniper, so I used the filbert nut and the juniper sprig of berries and leaves. MS. OKA DONER: Probably not. MS. OKA DONER: Well, I'm not making one easily identifiable, commodifiable thing, which is what a gallery needs. We all made so many promises. MS. OKA DONER: There's porcelain, white stoneware and terra cotta. That's very provincial, so everybody's drawing from a larger well, a deeper well, and that's probably very good since you can just get on a plane and be someplace. Unfortunately, much of this potential is never realized because the inside sales team has not been properly trained and coached. MS. OKA DONER: I had the paperback, which we're ruining, . MS. SHEA: Right. MS. SHEA: And how did you both think of the idea and then how did you present it to them? MS. OKA DONER: Yes, a stanchion, back to the stanchion. Patrick Lannan came and bought. MS. SHEA: So it's limited. See, I'm making the model for a Christofle vase. I had a wonderful teacher. I didn't want to drink that much. MS. OKA DONER: And I studied also with Dr. Spink, both of whom I'm still in touch with all these years. You leave before dawn and get back, it's dark. I knew a few people from Ann Arbor and they were living on the Bowery and they were drinking and partying. So let's keep our fingers crossed. MS. SHEA: And did you as you were growing up kind of go back and forth between Miami and New York? And so each one is unique. 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