Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/996854
51 and Food (the governing entity and majority funder) are the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (NordGen) and Crop Trust (formerly the Global Crop Diversity Trust). ROMANCING THE SEEDS For the past 10 years, a Texas artist has been on the trail of documenting select seed banks from around the globe, accompanied by X-ray views of some of their precious planetary-vital contents. Dornith Doherty, a 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, received the prestigious grant for this epic "Archiving Eden" world seed-bank project. The ambitious and ongoing endeavor has accrued critical interest in both the art and scientifi c communities, and Doherty's intelligent photographic documentation, which feels particularly urgent after the Svalbard ice melt breach, has been the subject of a TED Talk. In 2013, at TEDxMonterey, the artist spoke about the beginning of her investigations into the potent environmental topic. "Spurred by the impending completion of this Svalbard Global Seed Vault in 2008, I initiated a photographic project called 'Archiving Eden,'" Doherty said. "I was inspired by the simultaneously pessimistic and optimistic aspects of this vault. On one hand, we have individuals and governments from all over the world who are collaborating together to create the fi rst truly global botanical backup system. On the other side, the gravity of climate change and political instability has created a need for an inaccessible vault near the North Pole." Doherty, who wields a B.A. from Rice and an MFA in photography from Yale, has always made art that reverberates with environmental concerns. Previous topics produced series that explored the imperiled ecosystem at the Rio Grande, with superimposed photo collages of plant life and human habitation at the border, and filmed nighttime videos tracking coyotes near her suburban home. However, "Archiving Eden" is the body of work freighted with a global imprimatur. Two years after its start, the Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Texas made it to Svalbard. She has documented seed banks from London to St. Petersburg and even Austin, some begun nearly a century ago and others, like Svalbard, more recently. "These libraries of life are literally teaming with diverse forms that are fertile and in a state of suspended animation," she says. "And I wanted to talk about the tension between this elusive goal of stopping time in living materials." Her experience in the remote outpost of Norway was a physical and psychological journey that amounted to arriving at the Holy Grail. "Behind a frost-covered door is the door to the Ark," she says. In her research, Doherty uncovered countless stories of individual valor in saving seeds, including the seafaring British explorer who came home with botanical material from an expedition. Two centuries later, his leather pouch was uncovered in an attic, taken to Great Britain's Millennium Seed Bank in Kew Gardens, and the tiny seed material planted. Voilà — a new towering species was discovered. She also relayed the story of seed-bank staff during the siege of Leningrad in World War II who died of starvation rather than breaking into their cache of seeds. Doherty's work bridges art and science, "It's my hope that these poetic visual artifacts will start a conversation and perhaps spur one person to action," she says, in reference to the group of scientists at Nordic Gene Bank (now NordGen) who created Norway's back-up seed storage facility in 1984, in an abandoned coal mine outside Longyearbyen. They literally sowed the seeds for today's Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which opened in the same town a quarter century later. For Doherty, the quest continues. She's just completed a summer residency at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, a think tank on 2,000 acres in the Hudson Valley that is among the largest ecological programs in the world. Currently, works from "Archiving Eden" are on view in the museum show "Big Botany: Conversations with the Plant World," at the Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas in Lawrence (through July 15). In Europe, Doherty is a headliner at this summer's international Lodz FotoFestiwal in Poland (through July 1). Come 2019, she will solo at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. (January through June 2019). In Dallas, Dornith Doherty is represented by Holly Johnson Gallery. Works by Dornith Doherty: Empty Chamber, Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Spitsbergen Island, Norway, 2010. Barley Collection, N. I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2012. Garcinia, 2015 Dornith Doherty's Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Spitsbergen Island, Norway (detail), 2010