Public Art on Campus - Dornith Doherty
ART ON CAMPUS
Doherty became interested in photographing the Svalbard Seed Vault in Norway after reading about it in the New Yorker. “I was inspired by the hopeful/pessimistic nature of the seed banks. On one hand, the volunteers, scientists and institutions from around the world were collaborating to create a global botanical backup system, but on the other, had this bleak gravity of climate change and political instability which created the need for an in accessible arc located near the north pole.” She worked for years acquiring the credentials and knowledge needed to gain the trust of the scientists who ran the seed vaults in remote facilities such as the one in Russia.
She created these photographs as lenticular prints that change colors as the viewer moves past them. “This tension between stillness of the print and the changing of the color reflects my focus on the elusive goal of stopping time in living materials as well as the drying process central to the methodology of saving seeds.