MICHELE OKA DONER
New York based artist Michele Oka Doner (B. 1945, USA) career spans over five decades encompassing sculpture, jewellery, public art, and works on paper.
Since her MFA in 1968 and honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan in 2016, Oka Doner fuels her work by a lifelong study and appreciation of the natural world. Michele Oka Doner has extensive public art installations, with over 40 projects in the U.S. and Europe, in universities, libraries, museums, courthouses, hospitals, parks, and transportation hubs. Notable examples include Radiant Site at New York’s Herald Square subway (1987), Flight at Washington's Reagan International Airport (1995-2010), and A Walk on the Beach (1995–2010) at Miami International Airport, featuring 9,000 bronze sculptures embedded in terrazzo, one of the largest public artworks in the world. Oka Doner has collaborated with esteemed brands such as Steuben (glass), Christofle (silver), and Nymphenburg (porcelain). In 2016, she designed costumes and sets for George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Miami City Ballet.
Oka Doner’s Fluent in the Language of Dreams exhibition (2018) at Wasserman Projects revisits large scale floor installation pieces along with the artists’ sculptures and works on paper. Drawing from her residency at the New York Botanical Gardens in 2019, Oka Doner incorporates those forms into her visual language, manifesting in site-specific work and programs, allowing visitors to experience Garden landscapes with life-sized human figures.
The work of Michele Oka Doner can be found in the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, St. Louis Museum of Art, Yale Art Gallery, and the Princeton University Art Museum. Literature on the work of Oka Doner include Intuitive Alphabet (2019), Everything Is Alive (2017) , Into the Mysterium (2016), and Human Nature (2008).
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