'There's no craft here. This is about ideas'
The studio visit is an art world ritual and Michele Oka Doner's studio, though workshop would be a more appropriate word, is on Mercer Street in New York's SoHo. The rooms are large, high-ceilinged and crammed with things, both natural and hand-made. Assistants are bent over screens, looking at slides. When I visited, one fellow was punching designs into a sheet of butter-coloured paraffin wax.
I wandered around, examining rows of shells, giant tree roots, intricate scrims. Behind a huge round table stood a group of standing figures, headless and armless, their bodies textured like honeycombs or crumbling tree trunks. A pile of driftwood sat beside a table looking like a bonfire waiting for a match.
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Then Doner walked in. A slender woman just turned 60 with straight jet-black hair, she is an artist who manages to be at once excellent,highly successful and oddly underknown, even within the gossipy art world. This is, I think, partly because of the variety of her projects and materials, partly because many are commercial and partly perhaps because of her determinedly unfashionable concerns.
What's the driftwood for, I wondered?
"I have needed sometimes to make candelabras. Or I've needed a way to make a figure. And I've hauled one of those in. So this is raw material."
She walked me around.
"Let's call this whole loft a noble experiment. This is my laboratory. When I need a table, I make a table. When I've needed a chair, I've made a chair. I needed a fork, I made a fork.
"I'm on the frontier. Nobody has done what I'm doing. Except Alexander Calder. He made public art, he made sculpture, he made hair ornaments for his wife, he made necklaces for their birthdays, he made forks for the kitchen, he made everything.
"People used to do that. A long time ago. Anything that needed to be made, they made. They didn't ask. The Japanese still do that."
Do you make your own paper?
"Yeah. I made all of these books."
We approached a large round table. Which Doner also made. Likewise, the stools. Actually about the only things I can see that she didn't make, natural objects aside, are some pieces of furniture by Carlo Bugatti, the great designer, and father of another, the automobile engineer.
The art world is, by and large, deeply suspicious of craft, I observed. It's seen as hobby-ish.
"There's no craft here," Doner said equably. "Craft for me is about materials. This is about ideas. And what is fascinating is that the younger generation is bringing aggressively hand-made things into the arena. Because they don't want the machine-made things. They are tired of them."
I looked at some forks.
"I like to do flatware. I'm just starting some of these," she said.
She picked up the prototype, a pronged branch.
"I saw this and I saw that it was a good fork," she said.
Where did she find it?
"In the woods somewhere. I always find good things."
One of her forks had been in Feeding Desire, a show at the Cooper-Hewitt, the design museum on Fifth Avenue.
"I had to pull this one out of their gift shop because the new foundry didn't know how to do it. So on Monday the silversmith's coming at nine and we're going to beat the hell out if it."
She pointed out the anvil.
"Isn't that a beauty? I have the whole kit. I make jewels. Why shouldn't I make my own jewellery? It's just sculpture on a small scale."
What is she working on currently?
"I'm still working in Miami Airport. But what's opening now is an entrance lobby at the University of South Florida in Sarasota."
She added that four screens against the far wall were made for a courthouse in Gulfport. Mississippi. And these paraffin wax sheets?
"They are banisters for Bill Sofield, the architect. We are doing a beautiful balustrade in a home in Colorado." She hollered to her assistants. "Where is the Colorado place?"
And the honeycombed figures?
"Those are sculptures. They are for my next show at the Marlborough. I made them using a heat gun on wax. They are cast in bronze."
She picked up a piece of wood and looked it over.
"You know, if John Chamberlain picks up a car bumper and uses it to make a sculpture or gets one from an auto shop, they are accepted as found objects. Or the Duchamp urinal. They're made by technology, they are manufactured. The club membership has been using industrial cast-offs.
"But not nature. Nature's objects haven't been allowed in the door. But that's changing fast. That's right now breaking open. There's no difference to picking up a bumper and" - she indicated the branch - "picking that up in the woods."
Does she see the useful pieces and the artworks as different categories of object?
"No," she said crisply. "They are all about beauty. Beauty is one category."
Aha. Beauty. The contemporary art world by and large distrusts beauty at least as much as it distrusts craft. Michele Oka Doner, of course, knows this very well indeed.
她用手工制作一切
参
观工作室是艺术界的一种礼节，米歇尔?奥卡?多纳(Michele Oka Doner)的工作室（不过说成是车间也许更合适）位于纽约SoHo区的Mercer Street。房间宽敞而高大，堆满了各种天然和手工制作的东西。她的助手们趴在屏幕上，观看着幻灯片。我去参观时，一位助手正把设计图案压印在一张奶油色的石蜡板上。
我漫步而行，察看着一排排的贝壳、巨大的树根和精美的织物。在一张巨大的圆桌后面，有一组站立的人像，没有头也没有四肢，身体结构像是蜂巢或破碎的树干。一张桌子旁边立着一堆漂流木，就像是一堆等待点燃的篝火。
然后，多纳走了进来。她身材苗条，刚满60岁，有一头乌黑的直发。这位艺术家一举获得了巨大的成功，非常优秀却又奇怪地鲜为人知，即便在爱传八卦的艺术圈子。我认为，其中部分原因在于她的设计和材料复杂多变，部分原因在于许多作品是商业性的，还有部分原因可能在于她决心不追随时尚。
这些漂流木是做什么用的，我很好奇？
“有时我需要做枝状大烛台。或者需要一种制作人像的方法。我把其中的一个拿进来了。因此这是原材料。”
她陪我在工作室四处参观。
“让我们把这整个阁楼称为一次贵族体验吧。这是我的实验室。当我需要桌子时，我会造一张桌子。需要椅子，就做一把椅子。需要餐叉，就做一把餐叉。”
“我处在前沿。没有人做过我做的事。除了亚历山大?考尔德(Alexander Calder)以外。他创作公共艺术，制作雕像，还为他妻子制作发饰，为他们两个人的生日做项链，做厨房用的餐叉，他什么都做。”
“很久以前，人们常常这样做。任何需要做的东西，他们都做。他们不会问。日本人现在仍在这样做。”
你自己造纸吗？
“是的。这些书都是我制作的。”
我们走近一张大圆桌。这也是多纳做的。板凳也是。实际上，在我看到的东西中，除了天然物品外，唯一不是出自她手的，只有伟大设计师卡洛?布加蒂(Carlo Bugatti)制作的几件家具。布加蒂还是另一位伟大设计师――汽车工程师布加蒂的父亲。
我发现，艺术界对于手工艺品基本上是持极度怀疑的态度。它被视为一种业余爱好。
“这里没有手工艺品，” 多纳平静地说。“在我看来，手工艺品说的就是材料。而这是有关创意的。吸引人的是，年轻一代正把大量手工作品带入这个领域。因为他们不想要机器制造的东西。他们厌倦了那些东西。”
我看着一些餐叉。
她表示：“我喜欢制作扁平餐具。我刚开始做一些这样的东西。”
她拾起了原型，一根尖端分叉的树枝。
她说道：“我看到了它，觉得它是一把不错的餐叉。”
她在哪里找到的？
“在树林里的某个地方。我总是会找到好东西。”
她的一把餐叉曾出现在美国纽约第五大道(Fifth Avenue)库珀?休伊特国立设计博物馆(Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum)的餐具展上。
“我不得不把这把餐叉从他们的礼品店中撤下，因为新的铸造厂不知道该如何制作。因此银器匠周一九点将到这里来，我们将一起把它搞明白。”
她把那块砧骨指给我看。
“它不漂亮吗？我有一整套。我用它做珠宝。为什么我不能做自己的珠宝？这不过是小尺寸的雕刻。”
她目前在做什么呢？
“我现在仍在迈阿密机场(Miami Airport)工作。不过，现在开工的是萨拉索塔南佛罗里达大学(University of South Florida)的入口大厅。”
她补充道，远处那面墙上的4个屏幕是为密西西比州格尔夫波特一家法院制作的。那么这些石蜡板呢？
“它们是为建筑师比尔?索菲尔德(Bill Sofield)制作的楼梯扶栏。我们正在科罗拉多的一处寓所制作精美的栏杆。”她大声问她的助手：“是科罗拉多哪个地方？”
那些蜂巢状的人体呢？
“那些是雕塑，是为我在莫尔伯勒的下一次展览准备的。我是用热风枪在石蜡上制作的，然后用铜浇铸而成。”
她拿起一块木头，仔细察看着。
“你知道，如果约翰?张伯伦(John Chamberlain)拿起一个汽车保险杠，用它制作雕塑或从汽车商店里买一个，它们就被认为是随手拾来的艺术品(found object)了。或者是杜桑(Duchamp)夜壶。它们依靠的是科技，是人造的。俱乐部成员一直在使用工业废弃物。”
“但不是天然的。天然物品还没有获准登堂入室。但情况正在迅速改变。现在那种局面正在被打破。拾起一根保险杠与在树林里捡起这个（她指着那根树枝）没有任何区别。”
她认为有用之物和艺术品是不同类别的物品吗？
“不，”她干脆地答道。“它们都是关于美的，美属于一类。”
啊哈，美。当代艺术界对美的不信任，至少与对手工艺品的不信任程度大致相当。当然，米歇尔?奥卡?多纳对此的确非常清楚。
