Deborah A.Goldberg: I want to congratulate you on the beautiful exhibit at the Marlborough Gallery. I noticed that you had some new formats in the show, including your books. Could you talk about your unique books and your limited edition book, as well the two processes that you’re working with?
Michele Oka Doner: I’ve always enjoyed books for the obvious reason that you can travel to a different world anytime you open one up. It fills in the blanks of thoughts of accumulated hopes and dreams. Probably thirty-five years ago I bought a book that I couldn’t read. It had interesting wooden covers. You could hold it in the palm of your hand and the pages were parchment and the writing was in ink. But there were pencil marks and other smudges and all kinds of improvisations. I realized I just loved it as an object. I bought other books like that, that have been just works of art. You don't even need to read them. In a way, they stand as objects of fascination and a compilation from other cultures, other universes. The wax book is about materials I work with every day and the bronze books are about tablets and weight. None of these could be “read” in the traditional sense, or should I say, with the left brain. But they are all visual objects to be read with the right brain, “the earlier brain.” The book as object has been something that I have always enjoyed and enjoyed creating for this exhibition. (fig 1,2,3)
DG: Can you please talk about the Dykem® process used to make the books?
MOD: The Dykem process is a spray you can buy and use for layout. It's quite toxic. But it is quite gorgeous, delicious in its blueness and the variations on blue. There is even one spread where they found a yellow spray. They ran out of the blue, and they went for yellow, which is very acidic. We had to use an OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) regulated facility in Philadelphia that had a huge vent to spray these and wear masks. I think all of these materials won't exist in 25 years, in the same way that we now have relegated all our dirty manufacturing to the third world. Using the original Dykems' and the zip-up suits to do patinas, we made these things in my foundry, with no ventilation.
DG: Do you think that you will continue with book design?
MOD: I like the making of the book and I don’t think about the word “design.” Isn’t that funny? I see it more as baking a book. I feel I tilled the soil, I put the seeds in, they sprouted and they grew and I watered them. Then I harvested them and took a mortar and a pestle and I ground them up.
DG: You put a lot of effort into your investigation of the materials and the process, so in a sense you really were designing it, or at least collaborating with the designers.
MOD: Well I refer to it as artisanal, in that many things now are going back from something manufactured to something that is done from scratch. That is why we have got so many people with flocks of goats in Vermont making cheese or dairy herds now making cheese. We have people with Ph.D.s baking bread. We are really looking back to the agrarian roots of how things were done because we want more texture in our lives, we want more smell. We want to get rid of the plastic wrapper. This book was also conceived in that way and it is uncoated paper. I like the fact that it is nothing glossy, it is something you can actually touch.
The reason why I went through the time and energies of making the book is that I enjoy the process. I have always enjoyed the journey as well as the destination. I open the book now and I start seeing the names of the shapes. I get very excited because I can actually visualize the page they were on and where in the library. It is almost like weaving golden threads.
DG: You are very involved with authenticity and the process. There is a continuum through all that you do; you see the same image elsewhere but in a different medium, in three dimensions, in two dimensions as well. You have also been creating objects for Christofle and Steuben. What is the whole process in doing those projects? Do you initiate what objects you want to make, or do they say, We would like a spoon or we would like a bowl? How does that work?
MOD: Both. I’m a good listener. I hear what company’s needs are. I’m joining them and I’m working for them. They are not working for me. I didn’t hire them as fabricators, they hired me as an artist and as a designer to come in to their working situation and use their material in a way that expands them. So it is clearcut. They are terrific about having me bring ideas. I bring them a handful and they choose one or two or three, and we go on from there. It has been a delightful collaboration.
DG: Do you bring drawings with you? Wax maquettes, or?
MOD: Both. Sometimes I bring small objects, sometimes I bring ideas, sometimes I bring a sketch and it goes from there.
DG: I understand that you'll have some new objects coming out very soon with Steuben.
MOD: In the Fall, yes. It has been exciting. Bowls, fish bowls, crystal bowls. It's a wonderful privilege to work for a company, an American company that is 100 years old and still going.
DG: What do the fish bowls look like?
MOD: They look like large bubbles actually and I'm going to set them on cast glass reefs. It is a fish bowl; the shape of a bubble but with the top cut out and it is for real fish. I thought it would have a lot of charm and could be fun, because I was making reefs to put fish in.
DG: If you had to choose one or two things, what are some of the objects or sculptures you have made over the years that you are most proud of?
MOD: I would choose Miami Airport, because it is truly unique to Miami and provides an identity and a gateway to a city that is just booming right now. It needed an identity beyond Miami Vice. It was the beginning of putting down some patrimony of a work of art right at the entrance door. People enjoy it and it is recognized internationally. It has been in films and photo shoots, and it has been good for Miami. In fact, when they did the 8 wonders of Miami a few years ago, it was mentioned as number 1. (fig 4,5,6)
DG: That is wonderful. I know people who attended the panel at the School of Visual Arts might not have known your name, but when they saw your images, they remembered walking across certain floors that you had designed, like at the Hayden Planetarium. They were able to make connections with things they maybe had taken for granted at one point but then truly appreciated. Do you find that when people meet you they say, "Oh, I went to that place?"
MOD: Yes. The other project that I would mention is in Herald Square, here in New York In fact, I'll give you the United Nations speech, because I mentioned it as our own cave right here. (In November 2004, Oka Doner received the Award of Excellence from the United Nations Society of Writers and Artists.) I brought a hearth to the cave of the subways with 11,000 gold luster tiles.(fig 7,8) There is a warmth to them and they have a sense of the hand again. I brought an artisanal product to the concrete and steel and iron underground. I guess I am a real student of Louis Mumford in that way. The city and history I think should be very proud to be able to participate. I have had other moments, minor moments, but those two were major moments. When I went to Greenville, Tennessee to do the Criminal Justice Center in the Old Courthouse, they interviewed me in the basement. I looked up and there were two William Zorach wooden carved reliefs showing the great mighty rivers that go through the Appalachians, women with children, man with his muscle, just glorious pieces from the last WPA (Works Progress Administration) period. I got so excited to be able to be in the next wave of contribution. Those pieces are now installed in the new building as well.
DG: I know that we are seeing a lot more public art, particularly with the new administration. With Mayor Bloomberg, we are seeing a lot more art in the streets of New York and greater appreciation for public art. It is nice that you are a part of that resurgence as well. Your gilded bronze Terrible Chair from 1981 fits your aesthetic vocabulary in using thorn branches, yet is not functional. The late architect Arthur Danto wrote that your chair is your signature work, transmitting the message through its sharp spines, that although she makes chairs, she is not a designer but an artist. Are there other objects that you have created that look utilitarian but are not? Are there other objects that you have made throughout your career that you think function that way, that are more arty than functional, or where you mix the two?
MOD: I think most of them mix. I threw out the word comfort. I really do not care about being comfortable. You can sit on my chairs, but people who want to lose their posture cannot recline in lush comfort on one of my bronze chairs. So yes, they function, but again, you have to be in the right state of mind. You have to sit on them with probably more attitude or awareness than sitting down for comfort only. And the spoons are large and oversized. Some people might think they are heavy. I don't mind that. My things are cast in the old way, and they had weight. You did not need too many of them. One was sufficient. You needed both hands and you needed to pay attention.
DG: Well, you are definitely very much aware of your objects. They're not hidden. I've been doing a lot of lecturing at the Museum of Modern Art, where Yoshio Taniguchi, the architect, wants his museum to disappear behind everyone and he wants the viewers to just focus on the art. But if you are using one of your spoons, you are thinking more about the spoon than the pasta salad because of the weight or the size, maybe the scale.
MOD: Somewhat, but the other way of looking at it is that the spoon is actually modeled on my own hand and the length of the shank is from my wrist bone to my elbow. It is the natural scoop and the movement of it is beautiful. The little wrist movement with a tiny Victorian spoon is not as graceful. You use the spoon and the awareness comes into the whole body. They always say, "Lift with your legs, not with your back." I have always lifted with my whole body and 've always done everything with my whole body.
DG: Who are some of the artists, designers or architects that have inspired you in terms of your own aesthetic? Perhaps the Bugatti furniture in your home has been subtle in inspiring you?
MOD: Yes. His combination of materials, the boldness of parchment and copper and pewter and woods and silks is just remarkable. How insouciant and luxurious and audacious! Where do you see those words used in contemporary life? Name a contemporary artist that you can say all those things about. You know, it is interesting. We are so different. We do not have the materials. We do not have some of these ivories or we cannot do this anymore, and we do not have the people who have the time. It has all changed. What I love is the wide scope of Isamu Noguchi's work. I met him several times, once in Detroit when he came in for his retrospective. He was doing benches, doing set design, doing sculpture and doing public art. He did not think about the boundaries. He thought about filling any space that he could make something to suit. It was such a broad, unhampered vision, one that was not looking over his shoulders to see if it was okay with the current dictums. He was free in that way. He also felt he suffered as a result of it, but I think, ultimately, he didn't. I think Alexander Calder is also an example of such a person. He made gifts for his friends, jewelry for his wife, forks and spoons for his kitchen, art for the public, and sculpture. He made everything around him, and I like that. I saw that exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt years ago called Calder's World. I was so inspired and like him, I've done buttons and necklaces and all kinds of whimsical things, as well as taken over public art spaces. I also like Merritt Oppenheim's work.
DG: Please talk about the role of collaboration in your work. I understand you have others cast for you, but of course you play a very important role throughout the whole process. How has that been for you?
MOD: It is wonderful; you can't do it all by yourself, and the minute you understand that and you understand how important it is to have kindred spirits that are carrying on the execution of certain things. For example, with the glass blowers, making eye contact, knowing their names, being there, is very, very critical. I have lots of collaborators, and over the years, they have all stayed in touch. They know they were part of something bigger and it's a wonderful thing. I've had lots of students I've taught here in the loft. They get college credit and it keeps me in touch with what is going on in college campuses.
DG: Have you ever done glass blowing yourself?
MOD: I did once, in 1972, and I didn't love it because I couldn't touch it. Imagine, I'm so physical I like to hold everything and feel it. I could watch it, and it is pretty amazing to blow it, but it is also very, very heavy when it's hot at the end of those long poles. Truthfully, I was not going to go very far without having somebody else do the blowing. So I went back into wax, bronze, clay, and plaster.
DG: What do you think of the current trend of sculptors working from the computer, rather than crafting by hand?
MOD: It's not so current. I think in the 70's, people would do sketches of works and fax them to Lippincott, up in Connecticut. All of that work, which they now call "plop art", was done there, and nobody really touched it. It was all machined. It is fine. It was another thing, it had its moment, but the antecedent for this work was right there. My son once said that the idea of touching it was very Neolithic, not so important. The College Association that has sent me interns says that the students are all working on film and computer. They hardly get anybody in sculpture and painting anymore. It is a shift that I think has a lot to do with what we spoke about earlier; it is harder and harder to get things made by hand, given all of the constraints, the labor costs, and the poisonous and toxic materials.
DG: Yes, it's become more acceptable now for many artists to design things on the computer and have others generate it.
How do you respond to the trendiness of minimalism as an overarching link between art and design? It seems like minimalist design is something that is perpetuated quite frequently. But obviously your aesthetic is very organic and it is very different from minimalism.
MOD: I'm a minimalist in many ways though, and I don't reject it. I see minimalism as very important. It was reaction to a consumer society that's just gluttonous. In a strange way, it is the only noble and dignified response to the big sizing of everything. Diana Vreeland said it well. She said "Elegance is refusal." That's what minimalism is in some way.
DG: How has the role of installation in your art affected your interest in designing public spaces or your work in general?
MOD: I think installation is natural. We form our outer shell, we little mollusks. We are accreting and secreting our clothing, our homes, we are putting ourselves together. There's a
New Yorker review, from many, many years back, when there was a Matisse show. Adam Gopnik ended a long, long, long essay on the Matisse show with one of the beauties of Matisse's,
Red Studio. In this painting, he was obviously enjoying everything around him; the goldfish in the bowl, the oriental rug, the chair, the drapes and the table. He said Matisse gave us permission to do what the bourgeois want to do, which is, just to enjoy our surroundings. It is very bourgeois to do that, and Matisse said, "I do it too, and I like it." He is another artist I used to admire quite a bit. And Gauguin as well. I hadn't seen too many works of art, or expressions of art I should say, with tropical associations, and I loved seeing all of the lushness and the carved wooden panels. And now they took out, in the Dorsay, his ceramics, his frames, all of the "minor arts." They pulled them out with his masterpieces. There was an exhibition I guess about two winters ago at the Met that had a lot of these Gauguins. They brought out some of the other works as well, which we have not seen because there is more horizontal structure now coming up.
DG: I saw that when you mentioned you were doing this goldfish bowl, I couldn't help but think of Matisse, because that was one of his symbolic images.
MOD: Well I think that I just realized it now. That is why I've seen this happy goldfish in there, this bright, luminous, happy fish. I can't wait to have one myself.
DG: You did work with raku a long time ago. Do you think you'll go back to that at all?
MOD: It's funny that you mention it. I have gone back to it surreptitiously, with these palm books. We don't know what we're getting. We think we know what makes that iron red, but guess what..I went to that same tree in that same public golf course and risked getting arrested again and cut just what we thought and it didn't happen. We now wonder if it happens when those things were old and soaked or those things were dying. And then I thought, "Maybe it's like trees, it's the same leaf but it's about certain things happen in the process and times of year. Maybe it's like you can go to a maple tree, but you can't get that leaf to turn gold all times of the year. I said just the other day to Paul Wong, speaking of collaborators, at Dieu Donn Press, a wonderful collaborator, a wonderful fellow traveler, it's like raku. The last time I put something in and didn't know what I was going to get until it came out was when I built the raku kiln. Now I have got this paper press. I put these things in, we arrange them, we think we are not sure what is going to come through or not, and look what we get.
DG: There is the element of surprise and also a chance that is a large part of your art.
MOD: I love chance, I embrace chance.
DG: That is something you have in common with your former work in raku, with what you are doing now, that you don't know what you are going to get at the end.
MOD: There is another word, which I mentioned yesterday at Steuben, randomness. They have nothing random in their collection or in their worlds. I said, If you go in the showroom on Madison, my work will introduce the randomness. Look at Miami Airport. I showed them the brochure with the structure. My floor put in randomness. We have that in nature. We're missing that in our buildings.
DG: That takes us back to Surrealism because much of that art was unconsciously created, or there was an element of surprise in the end or the surprise reaction. One last question-what are some forthcoming projects that you plan or that you haven't started yet or that you hope to plan?
MOD: I am very excited to do a large book (40 by 60 inches) so when that opens up, it is 120 inches. That is a big book. It will be a book as a sculpture. I'm very, very excited about that piece. And then Chrisofle is doing my bronze necklace in silver and a small jewelry collection. And Marlborough is doing a collection of jewelry as well, because they realized that they are small sculptures and a lot of their clients have liked them. So I'm very, very excited about that. And I'm organizing the glyphic imagery that is like this piece that is my imprint. I have a lot of images that are glyphic. There is a wonderful book by Susan Brind Morrow called The Name of Things. What she says is that she took this funny boat down the Nile all the way to where civilization as we know it began, you know, paper making, writing, reeds of papyrus. She writes that the ancient glyph for red is a roseate spoonville, or flamingo. They saw the red bird flying and they put it down, that was red, that bird, and that was the origin of glyphs. That's how I've always made my own language seem. And as we did this book, we started by taking the glyphs out and then I thought, "No, there is so much here, it is better to make a smaller book", almost a flip book, of the glyphs, of the open book, and that is what I'm working on too.
Michele Oka Doner is an artist who works with wax, bronze, and glass, making sculptures that are inspired by the organic forms of nature.
Deborah A. Goldberg, Ph.D., is an art historian and writer who focuses
on
modern and
contemporary art and is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts.
