Everything Is Alive

Book excerpt: Oka Doner’s life work shines a light on the continuing importance of art and transformative power or our cosmic and enchanting natural world. Michele Oka Doner is one of today’s foremost artists. Her prodigious career spans five decades and numerous artistic media, including sculpture, works on paper, furniture, video, jewelry, and sets and costumes. In addition, she has created over forty iconic public and private permanent art installations. They are the focus of EVERYTHING IS ALIVE. The common thread running through Oka Doner’s oeuvre is her lifelong study and appreciation of the natural world, from which she derives her formal vocabulary. In EVERYTHING IS ALIVE this vocabulary hones in on magic, enchantment, and transformation as we are led through the artistic processes informing Oka Doner’s prominent art installations. From Micco, the monumental concrete sculptural pavilion suffused with native greenery of the nearby Everglades to Oka Doner’s haunting ceramic SoulCatchers and figurative sculptures born of clay at the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactury in Munich, to Miami International Airport, where Oka Doner’s Sargassum soars overhead and her A Walk on the Beach lies at the feet of over 25 million travelers who traverse its 9,000 oceanic bronze forms each year. Four distinguished essayists, Judith Thurman, Joseph Giovannini, Cynthia Nadelman, and Gregory Volk, serve as guides through Oka Doner’s evolution as an artist as seen in these installations, which are brought to life on 240 pages of stunning photographs, original process sketches, and sources of inspiration. EVERYTHING IS ALIVE offers a glimpse into the full breadth of Oka Doner’s work. Above all, it shines a light on the continuing importance of art and the worldview that there is beauty to be found in all living things.