News

Acclaimed North Texas artist Dornith Doherty has been photographing seed banks around the world since 2008, and the capstone exhibition, Dornith Doherty: Archiving Eden, has just opened at the Amon Carter. The show is a spellbindingly beautiful collection of 15 large-scale images, both of the seed banks themselves and digital collages from x-ray images Doherty took in the labs. Patron spoke with Doherty at the Museum the day before the August 12 opening.

PATRON: Your “Archiving Eden” project has consumed you for nearly 10 years—does the origin of this exploration date back to when you learned of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, the so-called “doomsday vault”?.....

Photographer Dornith Doherty spent nine years documenting remote seed vaults around the world — and the seeds inside them. She even got inside the so-called doomsday vault, in Norway, near the North Pole, designed to help preserve samples of botanical life in case of worldwide catastrophe.

Her large, ghostly images capture life inside seeds as small as a grain of sand.  You can see them in her new book, “Archiving Eden,” and in the show by the same name at Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

For our weekly State of the Arts, I spoke Doherty about how she makes her ethereal work. Here are some excerpts from our conversation...

Dornith Doherty Sees the Future in a Seed - The photographer, whose work is featured in a new exhibition at the Amon Carter, has spent the last decade visiting seed banks around the world....

Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas is pleased to announce the opening of, Crystal Cities: New Paintings and Sculptures by Tommy Fitzpatrick. This exhibition marks the artist's fourth solo show at the gallery. An opening reception for the artist will be held Saturday, September 9, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. The exhibition continues through November 4.

Architecture has been the subject of Fitzpatrick's paintings for the past twenty years. The current exhibition, Crystal Cities is inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's 1940 project of the same name set for a Washington D.C suburb that was never built. This unrealized project, bold in scale and breathtaking in its aesthetic vision inspired Fitzpatrick to create this new body of work....

In 2015, Syrian researchers made the first ever withdrawal from the Svalbard Global Seed Vaultto recover wheat, barley, and grass samples that had been lost when the Aleppo-based seed bank was destroyed in that country's civil war. That is exactly why the Svalbard "Doomsday Vault" exists. To date there are over 1,700 repositories like the one formerly based in Aleppo (which has since moved to Beirut), designed to function as natural safe deposit boxes for food crops and plant diversity in case of natural or man-made disasters....

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art presents Dornith Doherty: Archiving Eden on view August 12, 2017, through January 14, 2018. The exhibition of photographs by North Texas artist Dornith Doherty intertwines science and art, showcasing the planet’s botanical diversity through 15 images from seed banks across the world. Admission is free.

Paint, canvas, watercolors, paper, multi-media collage – these are all familiar components in making art. Michelle Mackey’s joint compound, however, is a bit of a surprise to the uninitiated. Holly Johnson Gallery, 1845 Levee St., No. 100, hosts Mackey’s second show in the venue, Michelle Mackey: Double Take....

Jackie Tileston's paintings are heterotopic spaces in which recombinant strategies and nomadic thinking create complex images that investigate the contemporary sublime and states of being. Tileston (b. Manila, Philippines) has a B.A. from Yale University and an MFA from Indiana University. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions in Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and Dallas, and group exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston), Art in General and the Painting Center (New York), and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art. Tileston is the recipient of the Core Fellowship Residency (1988-90), the Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2004), the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency (2005), the Guggenheim Fellowship (2006), and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2011). Tileston lives and works in Philadelphia, where she teaches at the University of Pennsylvania...

Holly Johnson Gallery is pleased to introduce, Michael Young: Updrafts, an exhibition of new paintings by the Austin-based artist. An opening reception will be held Saturday, June 24 from 5-8 pm. This exhibition marks the artists’ first show with the Dallas gallery and it continues through October 7. 

Over the last 30 years, Michael Young has developed a diverse and kaleidoscopic body of abstract geometric paintings, drawings and installations. Central to his work is an emphasis on facture, an attunement to the methodologies of making or constructing his paintings. His painting procedures are adapted from different sources such as geology, scientific documentation and architectural production, and result from the use of specific materials to construct the surfaces. For example, past installations and paintings have been distinguished by the use of sand collected from deserts, reflecting the mineral color of the geology of their place...  

for Gallery Magazine, Guangzhou, China (June Issue 2017)