Danielle Mailer is not author Norman Mailer and painter Adele Morales’s daughter for nothing. She shares the same socio-political sensibilities as her late father, but expresses them in a very different voice, through her visual art. She shares the same Latin American soul as her mother and highs and lows of heart. (She’s the second eldest of Mailer’s nine children by varied wives, who remarkably are all very close and very talented.)
Danielle has put together an exhibition, “Autumn Reveries” of some 20 pieces — paintings, sculptures, print and collages and a new experiment, shadow boxes, all of which were birthed out of concern for the upcoming election. The exhibition which opens October 30 and runs through December 20 at the Jamie Gagarin Gallery at the Oliver Wolcott Library, 160 South St., Litchfield, Connecticut, has an opening reception on Thursday, November 7 from 5-7 p.m.
“Everyone is tense over this election,” she said. “I binge on the news — anxious as to what kind of a country we will have if Trump wins, wondering what that means: how would that change our society?” Would it destroy social security, would there be an abortion ban nationally? Did Kamala have enough time to make her case? She thinks her dad (whose voice is so missed by so many) would “not be happy with either candidate. He would be fascinated by Trump, his power, his charisma; he would not be Kamala at all costs. On some level he would have loved to see a revolution — ‘Let’s swing to the right and see the whole country blow up and see where it takes us.’” He would, she says, be upset that we have so many wars going, and frustrated with the billions in arms to Israel, as she is.
But, big but, hers is not a political exhibition. “I’m filled with so much anxiety, what I paint gives me a kind of relief.” She said that art “functions in a therapeutic way. Art heals, and we really need to heal, as a society, our damaged culture. I want my grandchildren to have a different kind of world, and maybe I contribute in a small way to that optimism.”
The new exhibit, a year in the making, grew in part, out of a tee shirt and tote bag she designed, “Cats for Kamala,” suggested by gallerist Berta Walker to raise funds for the candidate and completed by Campagna Design. The design went viral and pushed her into continuing the animal theme — one she has pursued before — for this new show of her art which she curated for the Litchfield library’s gallery.
“I’m an animal person. They give me comfort. I’m catless and dogless right now,” Mailer said. “I found myself putting my ear to the chest of a neighbor’s dog, listening to his heartbeat.” Her mother used to take in strays, three legged cats, barely house-broken dachshunds: they’d be part of the family. There was always the scent, she says “of cat litter and pork roast” in their Greenwich Village apartment. “The cats would run through mum’s palettes and sprinkle colors on the floor.”
There have been Jack Russell terriers which lived to age 17, a special black and white cat, a Maine coon cat, two orange tabbies, one German shepherd; labs, pugs, and her father’s patient poodle who let the kids ride on him and for whom Norman hired a nanny at one point! There’s now a coven of crows in her apple tree in Goshen, Connecticut, where she lives with her jazz musician husband of 30 years and blended family. One crow likes her and stands on a limb not far from her when she feeds them moldy expensive cheese and salmon and talks to him.
So, composites of these beings appear in this exhibit, in various media, in varied sizes. The only being not winged or four-legged or fish or flower or butterfly or jazz instrument is an homage to the Day of the Dead with a luscious Jazz Queen swaying to the music, who is inspired by her mother Adele. (One sculpture, a large dachshund, was on the Connecticut governor’s mansion’s garden.)
But though there is joy in her work, she said, “so much anguish goes into making it. There are layers upon layers” before she gets to what she wants — “it’s all an exercise ridding me of my demons” trying to get to a personal light in spite of the dark side she (as she says her mum also did) lives with.
Trained formally in art and as a graphic designer, her love for patterns is so deep she says, “I fill up chairs, walls, nothing is untouched.”
Women (and children) in particular respond to her work, with its unique iconography, and there is something deeply feminine about it which is ineffable. Mostly it is the unification of all souls, of everything which is alive, whether flower, trombone, dog or bird; a sense that in the dance of the animate is deliverance from all our evils.
(“Danielle Mailer: Autumn Reveries” opens on October 30 and runs through December 20 at the Jamie Gagarin Gallery at the Oliver Wolcott Library, 160 South St., Litchfield, Connecticut; an opening reception will be held on Thursday, November 7 from 5-7 p.m. For more information, visit https://www.owlibrary.org/on-exhibit.aspx. To learn more about Danielle Mailer, explore her website at daniellemailer.com.)