Danielle Mailer’s Studio
Danielle Mailer will be showing at the Litchfield Makers Market. In addition to her sculptures, she will be showing and selling her prints and jewelry.
I first met Danielle in the ‘90s, when I had a restaurant in Torrington.
I used to book her husband, Peter McEachern, along with David Santoro and Mario Pavone to play jazz on the weekends.
I got in touch with Danielle to ask her to join us at the Market. I also wanted to see her Goshen Studio. We both teach kids art, so I wondered about her approach.
I have always taught unique populations, which allowed me to design my own curriculum, and Danielle has that freedom too.
A view into Danielle’s studio.
It was an icy, cold, early February Sunday during my favorite hours of sunlight. Slanting late afternoon rays from the sun made it seem warm in her studio. We had some catching up to do before we got down to the Process of teaching art. I outlined the story of the Market, how Art Tripping came to be, and the connections to familiar names she knows because I grew up in Torrington at a time when everyone knew each other.
DANIELLE TEACHES BOYS AT THE SALISBURY SCHOOL, A BOARDING SCHOOL IN LAKEVILLE, CT.
When we got around to talking about our approach, I wasn’t surprised to hear that Danielle hooked her students with auto-biographical pieces first, and embedded the ‘academic’ side of art within the process.
The elements and principles of art & design, not quizzes or memorizing concepts and the color wheel. That would not hook the kids.
When you have students who must take your class and don’t make art on their own, you have to find a way to get their attention. Even more, get them to like making art while they are there.
I approach teaching the same way, avoid emphasizing representational work, and focus on non-objective, expressive processes. I saw a self-portrait of one of Danielle’s students. Transparent, overlapping shapes of color, superimposed by a contour line drawing of a face. Danielle uses a projector and circular saws to cut wood and materials that become the ground for her student’s work. Substantial stuff.
We took a little tour of the studio then, works in progress, books & bits of notes, images, silhouettes, media, a lovely, casual collection of the ephemera of an artist in process.
WHEN I LOOK AT DANIELLE’S WORK, I AUTOMATICALLY HEAR THE WORD SACRED IN MY HEAD.
Her patterns are so contemporarily tribal, as if Danielle is creating her own visual, cultural, and symbolic language, like runes or hieroglyphics.
HER DANCING FEMALE SCULPTURES HAVE GODDESS ENERGY, UNMISTAKABLE GODDESS ENERGY.
The hot pink, magenta and red are fertile, and fused with Goddess energy of joy and power. Organic patterns of earthly life, flowers, birds, and unbridled growth. Mother Nature Dancing would be my Aboriginal name for that piece.
The Black Dancing Woman, with the white crow silhouette is a more serious version of Goddess wisdom to me: it is the Crone, the Wise Woman. The black color standing in for deep wisdom, night and mystery. Her flowers are woven and bounded by a regulated pattern of tiny, white squares. More contained and slightly more sedate.
Of course, all of these interpretations of mine about Danielle’s work are reflective of my projections that come from my sensibilities and experiences. This too, is something I would have asked my students to do, to write a reflection of their impression of a piece of art.
The Crow is a symbol that Danielle returns to time and time again. Something resonates there for her. I told her my idea of asking my student, who has a motif, to do a little research on that animal’s behaviors or its value as a spirit animal to an indigenous population. Usually, they would find that there was something there that resonated.
Uncannily enough, when I got home, I unearthed a couple of pieces I made as part of an art therapy process I was leading: Crow Medicine.
Masters of Illusion, they know the Unknowable. Keepers of Sacred Law. Messengers from the Spirit World, looking into the Inner Realms, Guides the Magic of Healing, the Change of Consciousness that brings about a New Reality and dissolves the ‘dis-ease’ or illness. I sent them to Danielle.
