October 24 — November 28, 2026
A Place on Earth
Billy Hassell
Conduit Gallery is honored to present A Place on Earth, a new body of oil paintings and watercolors by Fort Worth-based artist, Billy Hassell. The series is devoted entirely to depictions of Big Bend National Park, a place Hassell calls unique to Texas and to the world.
Big Bend sits alongside a cluster of protected areas across the US border in Mexico, including Maderas del Carmen, Ocampo, and Cañón de Santa Elena, directly across the Rio Grande. Together they form one of the largest and most significant biospheres on Earth and is a region that is currently under threat of destruction. The paintings in the exhibition remind viewers how important Big Bend is, to celebrate its beauty, and to point, in some small way, to the urgency of preserving it. As Hassell puts it, we all need places in the world to console our souls and restore our spirits and faith. It would be a travesty on a global scale for these consecrated places to be destroyed for the purposes of humankind.
Billy Hassell has dedicated the exhibition to the memory of environmental activist and author, Wendell Berry, who died on August 31, 2026. The exhibition's title is drawn directly from Berry's 1967 novel A Place on Earth, the second book of his Port William series. Through Berry's writing, and this book in particular, Hassell came to a deeper appreciation for the land, for the importance of community, and for an acute sense of the passage of time and all it implies.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Conduit Gallery and Big Bend Conservancy will present A Night for the Park, an evening with Hassell, Loren Riemer, Executive Director and CEO of Big Bend Conservancy, and Rick Gupman, Superintendent of Big Bend National Park, celebrating the landscapes and wildlife of the park. November 14, 2025, 5:00 to 8:30PM.
Billy Hassell (b. Dallas, TX, 1959) began exploring the wild areas and creeks of his East Dallas neighborhood as a child, filling his pockets with turtles, snakes, lizards, and frogs. Drawing those creatures marked the start of his artistic and life's work.
Hassell earned a BFA from the University of Notre Dame and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His work is held in numerous notable museum collections, including the Menil Collection, Houston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Wichita Falls Museum of Art; the U.S. Embassy in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; the University of Texas at Austin; the Ellen Noël Museum of Art, Odessa; the Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi; and the Tyler Museum of Art. His passion for preserving the outdoor world extends to conservation work, with artworks created for organizations including The Nature Conservancy, Ocean Conservation, Texas Parks and Wildlife, and Audubon Texas for use in fundraising efforts.