Texas State Artist Dornith Doherty's photography on display Feb. 4-March 12 at UNT ArtSpace Dallas

Tuesday, January 5, 2016 - 20:17
Category:
"Gaillardia" by Dornith Doherty.

What: Dornith Doherty: 2016 Texas State Artist, an exhibition featuring the photographs of Doherty, Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Texas and Texas State 2-D Artist

When: Feb. 4 (Thursday) - March 12 (Saturday). Gallery hours are from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays

Where: UNT ArtSpace Dallas, 1901 Main St., Dallas, on the first floor of the University Center Building

Cost: Free

More information: More information about the UNT ArtSpace Dallas gallery and exhibitions, and other UNT art galleries, can be found on the UNT Galleries website.

DENTON (UNT), Texas – A new exhibition will display the photography that made University of North Texas Distinguished Research Professor Dornith Doherty a 2016 Texas State Visual Artist 2D.

Dornith Doherty: 2016 Texas State Artist will run from Feb. 4 (Thursday) to March 12 (Saturday) at UNT ArtSpace Dallas, 1901 Main St., Dallas. Doherty, who has taught in UNT's College of Visual Arts and Design for 19 years, received the title of Texas State Visual Artist 2D from the Texas State Legislature from more than 600 nominees.

Doherty has focused on the "complex relationship between the natural environment and human agency." She said her photographs are meant to ask viewers to think about what humans are choosing to save, especially in the light of climate change.

The exhibition will include works from "Archiving Eden," in which she has photographed the preservation work of seed banks from around the world, and collaborated with scientists to make X-rays of the delicate and resilient seeds in their important collections. The project has taken her to such countries as Australia, Brazil and Russia to see how scientists are collecting and preserving plant seeds in case of extinction.

Doherty began the project after reading about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the North Pole in a The New Yorker article.

"When I first read about the opening of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in 2008, I immediately wanted to photograph it," she said. "I was inspired by the hopeful/pessimistic nature of the seed banks. On one hand, volunteers and governments from around the world were collaborating to create a global botanical back-up system, and on the other hand the gravity of climate change and political instability created the need for an inaccessible ark located near the North Pole. It's such a vividly heroic vision."

To photograph the seeds, she uses X-rays.

"When I work with X-rays, you are literally gazing into the plantlets and seeds -- things you cannot see with an unaided eye," she said. "Tiny (many are the size of a grain of sand or smaller) seeds that generate life remain simultaneously delicate and powerful."

Her other projects include documenting "the culturally inflected landscape" of the Rio Grande River valley.

Doherty's works have been featured in museums around the world, as well as numerous magazines and journals. She was a 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and has received grants from the Fulbright Foundation, Japan Foundation, the Society for Contemporary Photography, the Indiana Arts Commission and the U.S. Department of the Interior.

She also was a 2010 UNT Institute for the Advancement of the Arts Faculty Fellow, which allowed her to take a semester off from teaching to pursue her art. She received her bachelor's degree from Rice University and a master's of fine arts in photography from Yale University.

UNT News Service
News_Service@unt.edu
(940) 565-2108