MICHELE OKA DONER CATCHES A SWALLOW

YOU CAN SEE THE GLITTERING elegance of mid-century Miami fused to a reverence for natural materials in almost every object in Michele Oka Doner’s radiant new exhibition at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. The title, How I Caught a Swallow in Midair, comes from the artist’s 1990 cyanotype print in which the ghostly photograph of a stone accidentally produced what looked like the image of a bird—or a shadow of a bird—in flight. Oka Doner delights in the way both art and nature are graced with the ability to produce metaphors: a tree branch with a tangle of crisscrossing twigs transforms into a magical scepter given a touch of bronze and silver wash, and an eight-foot-tall “totem” of wax and organic material can resemble a caryatid. The show incorporates work from the 1960s, such as the haunting porcelain and iron oxide Tattooed Doll (coiled forehead), as well as signature objects cast in bronze, like her Burning Bush candelabra and her almost-pocket-sized spiky chair that appears to be constructed from thorny sticks. A new series of figurative works on paper demonstrates constellation-like intricacies of line and texture. The exhibition includes A Walk on the Beach, the color video with sound based on Oka Doner’s terrazzo walkway with inlaid bronze and mother-of-pearl at Miami International Airport. The opening of the exhibition coincided with the Miami City Ballet’s new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with sets and costumes also designed by Oka Doner. Work on the ballet gave her an opportunity to respond once again to the patterns of what she’s called Miami’s floating and shimmering underwater forest with its stalked sea flowers, coral, and turtle grass. pamm.org

NICK MERRICK, HEDRICH BLESSING PHOTO/COURTESY DONOR STUDIO, NEW YORK