Donna Dodson
area: Fine art, sculpture
Key Facts
nationality
USAarea
Fine art, sculptureresidence
Maynardrecommending institution
Fulbright Austriatime period
March 2022 - April 2022Donna Dodson is an American sculptor who has exhibited her artwork around the world. Dodson has completed successful residencies in Verbier Switzerland, Cusco Peru, Keelung Taiwan and Ringkoebing Denmark. Donna is currently a Resident Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center. Dodson’s recent show, “The Amazons Among Us” at the Boston Sculptors Gallery was met with critical acclaim. Donna is a Fulbright US Scholar at Q21/MuseumsQuartier in Vienna Austria working as an artist in residence at Tricky Women/Tricky Realities, the world’s only animation festival for women in 2022.
Dodson has won grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New Hampshire Guild of Woodworkers and the George Sugarman Foundation. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Provincetown Art Museum, the Art Complex Museum and the Fuller Craft Museum in Massachusetts, The Noyes Art Museum in New Jersey and the Davistown Museum in Maine. Donna's work has been reviewed in the Boston Globe, Sculpture Magazine, The Daily Beast and Artnet. She is a member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery, The International Sculpture Center and the Wellesley College Friends of Art at the Davis Museum.
Dodson is a graduate of Wellesley College. She enjoys public speaking, and has been a guest speaker at conferences throughout North America. Donna is a freelance writer whose articles in newspapers, magazines and blogs demonstrate the economic impact and global reach of the arts sector. Her paper, “What do we call courageous women” was recently presented at the joint annual meeting of the Society for Classical Studies/Archeological Institute of America in January 2022.
Dodson received a Fulbright Award to complete her professional project “Amazons, Goddesses and Wonder Women”. The project involves translating Dodson’s wood sculptures into digital avatars, writing the storyboard and script and making a short animated film, The Amazons Among Us: An Animated Antidote to Gender Misconceptions of Women.
Dodson recently completed a two year project as a Visiting Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center (WSRC) which focused on the Amazons of the ancient steppes. Her research into art history, archaeology and amazons in pop culture such as Wonder Woman led her to create a new series of wood sculptures that re-imagine Albrecht Durer’s “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” as Amazon warriors. Her four new wood sculptures premiered at the Boston Sculptors Gallery May 5-June 6, 2021 in a solo exhibit titled, “Amazons Among Us.”
Working with Catriona Baker, an award winning American filmmaker and Chair of Animation at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dodson will now animate all four characters for a short film and submit it to the Tricky Women Film Festival in 2023. Dodson will continue as Resident Scholar at the Brandeis University WSRC from 2021 to 2024. This collaboration will build bridges between the academic, feminist and artistic communities in Boston and Vienna. Dodson anticipates screening the animated film at the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Arts at Brandeis University in 2023 and hosting an interactive sculpture and animation exhibit or virtual program at the WSRC in 2024.