Everything Is Alive

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, from sculpture and works on paper, furniture and jewelry. 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 one is led through the artistic processes behind some of Oka Doner’s prominent art installations. From Micco, the monumental concrete arch suffused with native greenery of the Everglades to Oka Doner’s haunting ceramic SoulCatchers and figurative sculptures born from 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 millions of travelers who pass through each year.

Four essayists, Judith Thurman, Joseph Giovannini, Cynthia Nadelman, and Gregory Volk, serve as guides through Oka Doner’s evolution as an artist and creation of these installations, which are brought to life on the page through stunning photographs, original process sketches and inspirations. Everything is Alive offers just a glimpse into the full breadth of Oka Doner’s works, but most importantly, it shines a light on the continuing importance of permanent installations of art and the worldview that there is beauty to be found in all living things.