Wikiake

About

Daniela Naomi Molnar (born July 26, 1979, in Queens, New York) is an Author, Artist, Poet, and Educator. Her work focuses on ecological grief, climate change, and home. She has worked as an art director at Scientific American, Bear Deluxe, and Bitch magazines. Molnar is involved with ecopoetics and is the author of many poems and essays. Her first book of poems is titled CHORUS. She lives in Portland, Oregon. She was the founding director of the Art and Ecology Program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Career

Daniela Naomi Molnar’s abstract paintings depict the changing shape of glaciers. She uses natural pigments that she harvests from the landscape. Her poems and essays explore themes of loss, belonging, and grief. All four of Molnar’s grandparents survived the Holocaust. Her work references intergenerational trauma and antisemitism. She uses visual art and writing to explore the experience of loss. “Through grief,” Molnar has explained, “you mourn something gone, but you also move into a different depth of connection.” She uses personal emotions to connect to larger phenomena. Molnar says her work is to “draw attention to climate change and give shape to an often-abstract issue.”

Daniela Naomi Molnar holds an undergraduate degree from Evergreen State College, a certificate in scientific illustration from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a master’s degree in poetry from Warren Wilson College. Her first book of poems, CHORUS, was awarded the Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Contest. Her art has been exhibited nationally including at Round Weather Gallery in Oakland, CA. Molnar’s writing has been published by the Oregon Humanities Council, petrichor journal, Cirque, and others. Her work has been featured in the LA Times, Oregon Public Broadcasting, and the Oregon Encyclopedia.