Orcas Center’s Visual Arts Committee is pleased to present the next art opening, Friday, Sept. 27 from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. with artist Robert Dash in the lobby and a community show of drawings and prints in the Madrona Room.

This show will be on display through Oct. 24.

Dash is an award-winning author, photographer and career science educator whose work features micro nature’s complex textures and patterns. His work has been published by TIME, Geographical (UK), Lenswork, and National Geographic.

Dash’s images have appeared in galleries and juried shows in the US and overseas; his traveling exhibition and new book are entitled Food Planet Future: The Art of Turning Food and Climate Perils Into Possibilities.

Dash’s interest in nature, science, and photography has been his passions since childhood, and recently, his focus has shifted to food — a different kind of nature — and how it has been manipulated and relied upon by humans. The Food, Planet, Future exhibit explores Dash’s fascination with how the agricultural system impacts climate and biodiversity and how it can be understood and appreciated. In particular, how we can grow food that helps the earth rather than harms it.

As an artist, Dash considers himself a self-taught photographer and has sought feedback and inspiration from national and international portfolio review groups sponsored by galleries, museums, publishers, and collectors. Through that process, Dash has pursued a body of work centered around a cohesive theme that can be sequenced and tell a greater story than a single snapshot.

“I’m very interested in awe and wonder and have it be an introduction to the issues we face,” Dash states. “My purpose with this exhibit is to see our place in the agricultural system and how we can help reverse climate change and biodiversity loss. Our food choices – the food we eat, how it’s grown, and where we get it – hugely impacts the state of nature. And we all have the ability to make changes to support the environment we share.”