Michele Oka Doner

Exhibited at DESIGN MIAMI. 2023

Created exclusively for the The Book of Love fundraiser for the Books & Books Literary Foundation, this limited-edition print features Michele Oka Doner’s original artwork celebrating Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, one of hundreds of beloved titles subject to recent book bans and challenges.

According to Oka Doner: “Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man emerges from the shadows.

Fragments of earth, sod and soil, fill in the form and create a new Adam.”

All proceeds benefit the Books & Books Literary Foundation’s urgent fight for the right to read.

About Michele Oka Doner:

Michele Oka Doner is an internationally renowned artist and author whose work spans five decades. Encompassing sculpture, public art, prints, drawings, functional objects, artist books, costume and set design, video, and other media, her artwork is fueled by a lifelong study and appreciation of the natural world, from which she derives her formal vocabulary. She is well known for creating over 40 public and private permanent art installations, including “A Walk On The Beach,” the mile and a quarter long bronze and terrazzo concourse at Miami International Airport. She is Ambassador for Arts and Culture for the City of Miami Beach and Guardian of the Great Miami Beach Banyan Tree.

Oka Doner’s work can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Chicago Art Institute, Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum (Smithsonian), the Louvre – Paris, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, as well as in museum collections at the University of Michigan, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Oxford, among numerous others nationally and internationally. She maintains a studio in New York City.

About Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison:

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this deeply compelling novel and epic milestone of American literature, a nameless narrator tells his story from the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. He describes growing up in a Black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood," before retreating amid violence and confusion. 

Originally published in 1952 as the first novel by a then unknown author, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, James Joyce, and Dostoevsky.