The Record Newspapers - Hometown News For Orange County, Texas

The Art Museum of Southeast Texas (AMSET) presents two dynamic exhibitions showcasing artwork depicting various multifaceted and complex pieces. Dornith Doherty: Oasis and Celia Eberle: In the Garden of Ozymandias will be on view Sept. 20, through Jan. 4.

An opening reception for both exhibitions will be held from 5:00 - 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 27 at AMSET. Dornith Doherty will be present to conduct discussions about her artwork. Celia Eberle will participate in a gallery dialogue with Christina Rees, editor and columnist at Glasstire and essay writer for Eberle’s gallery guide.

Dornith Doherty: Oasis

This exhibition documents two international seed banks with microscopic precision and ethereal beauty. Focusing on x-rays at seed bank facilities where research is conducted and routinely used for viability assessments of accessioned seeds, Doherty documents and subsequently collages the seeds and tissue samples that are maintained in these research collections.

The amazing visual power of magnified x-ray images, which springs from the technology’s ability to record what is invisible to the human eye, illuminates her considerations not only of the complex philosophical, anthropological, and ecological issues surrounding the role of science and human agency in relation to gene banking, but also of the poetic questions about life and time on a macro and micro scale. Doherty is struck by the power of these tiny plantlets and seeds (many are the size of a grain of sand) which generate life and endure the time span central to the process of seed banking.

“As landscapes around the world become more arid due to climate change, seed banks play an important role in ensuring the future survival of our plant life and food supply,” states Doherty. “These facilities can be regarded as a type of oasis; a verdant island surrounded by desert which provides a safe place of refuge and rejuvenation.”

Oasis is part of a larger project, Archiving Eden, which Doherty has been working on since 2008 in an ongoing collaboration with renowned biologists at seed banks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Norway, Australia and Brazil.

Dornith Doherty: Oasis is organized by AMSET and funded, in part, by the Wesley W. Washburn, M.D. and Lulu L. Smith, M.D. Endowment Fund, the Helen Caldwell Locke and Curtis Blakey Locke Charitable Trust, the C. Homer and Edith Fuller Chambers Charitable Foundation, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Beaumont.

Celia Eberle:

Also on view is In the Garden of Ozymandias, which will include a selection of Celia Eberle’s surreal mixed media sculpture of diverse and mesmerizing materials highlighting the basic nature of the human experience. Her media, which include animal bones, wire, marble, jasper, agate, wood, coral, brass, newsprint, cardboard and other found objects communicate the artist’s quirky imagination with technical proficiency in a myriad of materials.

For over two decades, she has drawn on an expanded concept of explanatory mythology in an effort to understand many complex phenomena concerning the human condition. She chooses imagery based either on its ubiquity or the pervasiveness of an attendant idea. Over the years, she has used many mediums and approaches to tackle this core issue. In the Garden of Ozymandias is a survey of these efforts.

Celia Eberle: In the Garden of Ozymandias is organized by AMSET and is funded, in part, by the Wesley W. Washburn, M.D. and Lulu L. Smith, M.D. Endowment Fund, the Helen Caldwell Locke and Curtis Blakey

Locke Charitable Trust, the C. Homer and Edith Fuller Chambers Charitable Foundation, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Beaumont.

For more information on the exhibitions or reception, visit www.amset.org or call (409) 832-3432.