In Residence: Michele Oka Doner

Like a fossil embedded in stone, the art of internationally renowned sculptor and designer Michele Oka Doner is imprinted into the fabric of her SoHo loft home. Instead of walls, Oka Doner’s elegant studio apartment is shaped by the flotsam and jetsam of conch shells and minerals, separating the kitchen from the lounge, and dried bark and petrified tree roots that divide the piano from the dinning table. For the latest In Residence the Miami Beach native opens her home, where we see gold, bronze, clay, wood, wax and paper—the earth’s raw materials—which form the foundation of her art. Oka Doner’s work ebbs and flows between the handmade and the organic, inspired by world histories and folklore. “The sheer breadth of her interests and influences made for one of the most fascinating conversations of my career,” says episode director Max Hemmings. “She makes such remarkable connections—everything from Herbert Read to Ötzi the Iceman—as if drawing on a whole library at will.” Na