A CONVERSATION BETWEEN MICHELE OKA DONER AND JULIA P. HERZBERG – TALISMAN, A SACRED GROVE

Talisman, A Sacred Grove is a natural grove featuring twenty-one different species of trees that support approximately two hundred hand-formed heads, known as Talisman. The grove is installed on Park Avenue mall near the corner of East 66^th Street in front of The Park Avenue Armory.

It is the first sculptural installation of its kind installed underThe Fund for Park Avenue in its twenty-six-year history. Michele Oka Doner’s mise-en-scène, with its reference to the sacred and the magical, is a very exciting creative endeavor that draws on the artist’s art work across multiple media with innumerable forms of natural life. Among the artist’s exceptionally diverse works, made with nature’s materials in unusual sizes and forms, Oka Doner is especially renowned for her more than forty public artworks throughout the United States and abroad.

Travelers from the world over are likely familiar with A Walk on the Beach (1995-2010), a 1.5-mile-long concourse atMiami International Airport with 9,000 embedded bronze and mother-of-pearl elements, each one a unique shape of marine life, including seaweed, sea urchins, and tropical seeds, among other aquatic forms;Radiant Site (1990) at the Herald Square MTA station, New York; Flight (1997), made of terrazzo/cast bronze at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, VA; SoulCatchers (2009) at the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory, Munich, Germany; and Bird House (2026) in Bayshore Park, Miami Beach. 

Having worked for more than six decades with nature’s materials, Oka Doner’s Talisman, A Sacred Grove is the epiphanous sculptural installation realized after a series of material experiments and technical decisions related to the landscape on the Park Avenue mall and to the theatrical auraassociated with the many cultural productions held at the Park Avenue Armory, a preeminent arts and cultural venue between East 67th and East 68th Streets in New York City.   

JPH: Let’s talk about the meanings conveyed by a sacred grove, the Talisman, and their relationship to contemporary sensitivities.

MOD: Sacred groves were natural places of reflection for our ancestors who engaged creatively with plants, that were the source of their shelter and sustenance. The notion of a biblical tree of life is more than metaphoric. When early homo sapiens were done pulling roots, collecting edible herbs and leaves, even scraping bark from trees, they gathered around the fire at night, looked up at the stars, and wondered. Awe turned to speculation and to invention of ritual. The trees’ leafy domes provided a site for subsequent ceremonies that have come down to us in the form of myths, stories, and songs that carry these golden threads—all leading to a conscious awareness of our place in the scheme of things. I learned one of these songs in elementary school, The Ash Grove, and I continued singing it over a lifetime. Years ago, I found a vinyl recording by Benjamin Britten on the piano and Peter Pears singing. I still have the recording and the record player, so I can listen to it! 

The ash grove, how graceful, how plainly ‘tis speaking,

The harp through it playing has language for me;

Whenever the light through its branches is breaking

A host of kind faces is gazing on me.

The friends of my childhood again are before me,

Each step wakes a mem’ry as freely I roam;

With soft whispers laden, its leaves rustle o’er me;

The ash grove, the ashgrove alone is my home.

JPH: What were some of the creative as well as the technical decisions that inspired you to visualize a natural grove with the twenty-one varieties of beautiful trees—both enhancing and differentiating themselves from the planted ones on the mall between East 66^th and East 67th Streets?

MOD: Julia, the main technical decision had to do with weight. The MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) put me on a diet of 8,000 pounds because Metro North Railroad runs under the Park Avenue Mall. The soil we used was specially formulated for use on urban terraces with landscaping. Fortunately, I found Thomas Little, of Urban Green Gardens who enjoyed the challenges of bringing green and color into urban surroundings. I discovered him quite by accident while walking around my downtown neighborhood. Tommy Little had planted several horticulture arrangements that caught my eye! I accidentally discovered his workby asking people in neighborhood establishments whose exterior entrances he had designed. The plants that I selected for the grove on the Park Avenue mall needed to be native, local, familiar, even ordinary, to correspond with the surrounding landscape—so that the visual emphasis would be on the three hundred Talisman as works of art.

The trees also needed to be hardy, so they could thrive throughout the four seasons. In addition to the specialists I worked with, I hired a tree nanny to water the sculptural installation over six months, from March through October.

Tommy and I spent a day on Long Island looking at trees with strong limbs for the installation, Talisman: A Sacred Grove. We added additional natural organic materials from old forest floors—to enclose the platform containing the trees so that viewers on either side of the mall would only see the installation from their distinctive viewpoints. Since there is a cacophony of visual stimulation on Park Avenue, it was important to create a dense thicket of trees to block out a lot of the ambient light. So only then would the idea that Talisman as urban fireflies be visually radiant and celebrated.

JPH: You have used hand-formed figures of Talisman and Soul Catchers in previous public and private sculptural installations. Would you tell us about a couple of those installations?

MOD: Years ago, on the island of Ibiza I created an installation for Guy Laliberté, a street magician who juggled his way to become Founder of Cirque du Soleil. He commissioned a bronze sculptural ring for seating and a radiant disk for dining. When the issue of shelter from the elements arose, I suggested he move some of the island’s majestic Algarroba trees to the site for a shaded enclosure. In their fullness, the trees would also envelop the site in darkness beginning at dusk. When I perceived what the site would look like at dusk, I decided to make over one hundred wood pulp lanterns so that Guy, a magician, could spontaneously create whatever light patterns he desired. For example, he could use all of them on the trees, or just a few. My point was to provide Guy with the ability to play with the light that lanterns provide. Maybe on one evening he would use all the lanterns; on another night, only a few.

JPH: What were some of the challenging tasks you encountered regarding the materials and maintenance of this mise-en-scène on Park Avenue? 

MOD: One of the main challenges was the need to light the installation for nine months. I found a lighting specialist who solved the problem with fiber optics. Another concern was to calculate how much weight the leaves would add to the designated 8,000-pound limit when the trees were in full bloom in the summer! The decisions were somewhat difficult to calculate; I could only remain hopeful.

Maintaining the visual aspect of the installation will be an ongoing challenge. Plants don’t stop growing or responding to weather. Therefore, a water nanny becomes a necessity. Tommy Little and I will be watching out for any disruptions or changes that require attention. The torrential rains that occurred during the early March install were quite dramatic. A river literally ran down Park Avenue as we unloaded the Talisman from the van. We had to suspend the planned full night installation, which required a crane because it became impossible to work in a downpour. We’re on alert for whatever may occur weatherwise between now and November.

JPH: Would you like to mention Totem (2007-2015), the archival wax and wood sculpture that looks like a tree?

MOD: Totem is a sculpture that evolved over a period of time in the studio. Constructed with wood and archival wax on a steel frame, it became an immersive experience, a human figure/natural hybrid fueling inquiry into transformation, evolution, and cycles of growth and decay. Rough, rugged, raw, and yet elegant. Totem blurs the distinction among categories.  

JPH: Michele, it’s been wonderful working with you over these past two years as you developed this very special sculptural site, Talisman, A Sacred Grove. I thank you for the opportunity to delve into your capacious artistic practice. It has been an enriching experience to follow the development of this magical garden on the Park Avenue mall where time and place and imagination and nature unfold in real time.

Biographical notes:

Michele Oka Doner was born in Miami Beach in 1945, the daughter of Kenneth Oka, who was Mayor of Miami Beach from 1957-1959 and from 1961-1963, and spent her life studying and appreciating the natural world, going on to become an internationally renowned artist and author with over forty public and private permanent art installations spanning five decades that often are inspired by or incorporate elements of nature into the work, including "A Walk On The Beach," the mile and a quarter long bronze and terrazzo concourse at Miami International Airport seen by over 40,000,000 travelers every year; and, Oka Doner has used her creative platforms to educate and advocate for protecting our local environment, such as a series of books that pay homage to the natural world and call attention to the health of Biscayne Bay, with paper she made that is imbued with banyan tree roots, banana leaves, and other material she collected, and collaborated with another Miami Beach cultural icon, Micky Wolfson Jr., on Miami Beach: Blueprint of an Eden, a book of the history of their families and of Miami Beach; and, The Banyan tree located in Bayshore Park in Miami, on what was the former Par 3 Golf Course site, is approximately 95 years old and the largest in southeast Florida. It provides as much environmental benefit as forty mature large canopy trees, like oak or gumbo, in terms of carbon sequestration, stormwater uptake, and air filtration. This tree, which many residents have personal connections to, including Oka Doner, is in the process of being designated a City of Miami Beach heritage tree; and, Michele Oka Doner continues to represent Miami Beach as an Ambassador for Arts and Culture while creatively advocating for our environment, especially the iconic Bayshore Park Banyan tree, which is being preserved and will be the signature element of Bayshore Park upon its completion. Oka Doner –Guardian of the Great Miami Beach Banyan Tree—calls on all of us to be stewards of the environment, not its masters. ©

Julia P. Herzberg, Ph.D. is on the Sculpture Committee for The Fund of Park Avenue. She was a former editor for Arte al Dia for many years.

Acknowledgments:

The Sculpture Committee for The Fund for Park Avenue and NYC Parks and NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks are the organizing principals for the sculptural installation Talisman: A Sacred Grove.

Photo credits © Michele Oka Doner.