Blog

Michael Endo, juror and curator of Tg: Transitions in Kiln-Glass, shares a presentation that explores the changing landscape of kiln-glass and the evolution from Emerge—the precursor of the current exhibition—into this new expanded form. Endo discusses the history of Bullseye Glass and the myriad directions in which kiln-glass is headed.  

Tg: Transitions in Kiln-Glass is Bullseye Glass Co.'s biennial juried competition honoring outstanding contemporary kiln-glass design, architecture, and art. Works by award winners and finalists are on view in an exhibition hosted by Bellevue Arts Museum in early 2022; touring to Pittsburgh Glass Center in late 2022, and Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in 2023.

Bullseye Projects is pleased to announce the award winners for Tg: Transitions in Kiln-Glass, Bullseye Glass Co.'s biennial juried competition honoring outstanding contemporary kiln-glass design, architecture, and art. Works by award winners and finalists are on view in an exhibition hosted by Bellevue Arts Museum through May 29, 2022.

Join curator Michael Endo for a virtual studio visit with artist Æsa Björk. Björk shows her work in progress for Passage at The Byre, a group exhibition in northern Scotland featuring site-specific installations by Stine Bidstrup, Æsa Björk, Matt Durran, Jeffrey Sarmiento, and Petr Stanický.

Curator Michael Endo leads a virtual studio visit with artist Matt Durran. Durran invites us to explore his preparations for Passage at The Byre, a group exhibition in northern Scotland featuring site-specific installations by Stine Bidstrup, Æsa Björk, Matt Durran, Jeffrey Sarmiento, and Petr Stanický.

Curator Michael Endo leads a virtual studio visit with artist Stine Bidstrup. Bidstrup describes her work in progress for Passage at The Byre, a group exhibition in northern Scotland featuring site-specific installations by Stine Bidstrup, Æsa Björk, Matt Durran, Jeffrey Sarmiento, and Petr Stanický.

A meditation on his work in glass from artist Petr Stanický, by filmmaker Filip Hostynek. Stanický is currently in preparation for Passage at The Byre, a group exhibition in northern Scotland featuring site-specific installations by Stine Bidstrup, Æsa Björk, Matt Durran, Jeffrey Sarmiento, and Petr Stanický.

Curator Michael Endo leads a virtual studio visit with Dr. Jeffrey Sarmiento, artist and senior lecturer at School of Art & Design at the Australian National University. Sarmiento explains his inspiration and process in preparation for Passage at The Byre,  a group exhibition in northern Scotland featuring site-specific installations by Stine Bidstrup, Æsa Björk, Matt Durran, Jeffrey Sarmiento, and Petr Stanický.

“Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.” - Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Six months after opening the second Byre exhibition we returned for a final photo shoot of its rooms. It was early March of 2020 and what had seemed at the time a quick visit to the site with plans for future additions, alterations, private tours, and events merged almost overnight with a world in which a precarious edge was moving into its center. 

My name is Jeffrey Sarmiento, and I am currently senior lecturer at School of Art and Design at the Australian National University. But I'm conducting all my work from lockdown in Sunderland in the UK. And I'm here with Anthony Amoako-Attah, with whom I've had the pleasure of working for the last many years now. And Anthony has been the center of quite a lot of attention lately, and that's the reason we're having this little chat to share with you today.

The carving in the Somerset table contains the timeless swag motif that has been employed for thousands of years. The medium of glass and the carving itself blurs the lines between traditional and contemporary. – Zeinab Harding 

The international adventure titled simply “SOMERSET” brings together a London-based woodcarver, a glass studio in California’s Mojave Desert, and a Portland, Oregon, metal fabrication/design studio; all linked by an artisanal glass factory in the US Pacific Northwest.

The project has many chapters but at its core it is an ode to material. To the hands of the maker that lives within the glass. And to the history of an old building and its preservation. 

Original wood carving: Zeinab Harding / London

Glass Casting: Michael Endo / HIGH DESERT OBSERVATORY, Yucca Valley, CA

Metal Fabrication: Brian Creany / FLUX DESIGN, Portland, OR

Management and Project Design: BULLSEYE PROJECTS, Portland, OR

Field Notes, a site-specific exhibition created in response to the land, architecture, history, and culture of Caithness, Scotland, opened on August 9th, 2019 with a whirlwind event that capped over two weeks of intensive installation. Visitors descended on the small Manse, garden, and Byre to celebrate the work of artists Annie Cattrell, Anne Vibeke Mou, Anne Petters, and Jeff Zimmer. But let’s step back a bit: before the event, before the bagpipers, before the lights were set. Before groans, curses, and aching backs that accompanied the installation of the show, I arrived to a near empty space. 

Emerge 2018 is Bullseye Glass Co.'s tenth biennial juried exhibition for rising talent in kiln-glass. Three jurors were tasked with reviewing hundreds of entries, selecting a group of  finalists, and then selecting seven award winners. After the jury process ended, Bullseye Projects curator Michael Endo sat down with jurors Heidi Schwegler, Diane Wright, and Benedict Heywood to discuss the award winners, the competition, and the landscape of contemporary glass. An edited excerpt of that conversation is published in the catalog Emerge/Evolve 2018: A Showcase of Rising and Evolving Talents in Kiln-Glass.

In this final part of the conversation, the jurors discuss three honorable mention works and offer some advice for future applicants. In addition to Michael Endo and the jurors, Mary Kay Nitchie, Bullseye's Marketing Manager, and Lani McGregor, Director of Bullseye Projects, were present.

In August of 2019, a new exhibition will open in The Byre, a remote exhibition space situated in the northernmost county in Scotland. Titled Field Notes, the exhibition will feature site specific works by Annie Cattrell, Anne Vibeke Mou, Anne Petters, and Jeff Zimmer. Each of these artists, through site visits and a group residency, has developed a series of works responding to the unique landscape, culture, and architecture of Caithness. Artists Annie Cattrell and Anne Vibeke Mou, in particular, are exploring the relationships between human activity and the land through empirical, geologic, and anthropological research.

On a rocky cliff overlooking the waters of the North Sea, the dirt and grass beneath my feet only just covers layers of sedimentary rock that was formed at the bottom of a lake 370 million years ago. Caithness, the northernmost county in Scotland, as well as the barely visible Orkney Islands and the distant Shetland Islands, were once covered by a massive Devonian lake. Eons of time, geologic pressure, tectonic shifts, and rising and receding waters pushed this rugged, stony coastline above the waves.

Millions of years after its formation, this stone was quarried to create dwellings, cairns, brochs, ritual gatherings of standing stones, and fortifications; offering layers of human history told to us through stone. Around three hundred years ago, stones, unearthed from an adjacent field, were stacked into a series of joined buildings whose history is threadbare and speculative. For a time it housed animals and possibly people. Later, farming equipment. Later still, it became a garage. Its current and unlikely incarnation is that of a remote art exhibition space called The Byre.

Emerge 2018 is Bullseye Glass Co.'s tenth biennial juried exhibition for rising talent in kiln-glass. Three jurors were tasked with reviewing hundreds of entries, selecting a group of finalists, and then selecting seven award winners. After the jury process ended, Bullseye Projects curator Michael Endo sat down with jurors Heidi Schwegler, Diane Wright, and Benedict Heywood to discuss the award winners, the competition, and the landscape of contemporary glass. An edited excerpt of that conversation is published in the catalog Emerge/Evolve 2018: A Showcase of Rising and Evolving Talents in Kiln-Glass.

Emerge 2018 is Bullseye Glass Co.'s tenth biennial juried exhibition for rising talent in kiln-glass. Three jurors were tasked with reviewing hundreds of entries, selecting a group of  finalists, and then selecting seven award winners. After the jury process ended, Bullseye Projects curator Michael Endo sat down with jurors Heidi Schwegler, Diane Wright, and Benedict Heywood to discuss the award winners, the competition, and the landscape of contemporary glass. An edited excerpt of that conversation is published in the catalog Emerge/Evolve 2018: A Showcase of Rising and Evolving Talents in Kiln-Glass.

In February of 2018 I was in London representing Bullseye Projects at Collect, an international fair for modern craft and design, when artist Heidi Schwegler called, informing me that we were to become neighbors in the Mojave desert. It was only a few weeks prior that Heidi Schwegler had expressed disbelief when my wife and I confided that we were building a studio in Yucca Valley, California. Fast forward to today and we are all living in the desert, building a studio together, in the middle of a working relationship that began in 2015 when I assisted Schwegler in creating her first work in kiln-glass, introducing her to the material and process.

As of June 1, 2019 Bullseye Projects will no longer be operating our Pearl District location. Details are in Bullseye's press release:  http://www.bullseyeglass.com/news/bullseye-glass-company-closes-exhibition-and-projects-space-in-portlands-pearl-district.html

Bullseye Projects will continue to oversee ongoing touring exhibitions, educational outreach, and an increased online presence. Please join our mailing list to keep in touch! 

Emerge 2018 is Bullseye Glass Co.'s tenth biennial juried exhibition for rising talent in kiln-glass. Three jurors were tasked with reviewing hundreds of entries, selecting a group of  finalists, and then selecting seven award winners. After the jury process ended, Bullseye Projects curator Michael Endo sat down with jurors Heidi Schwegler, Diane Wright, and Benedict Heywood to discuss the award winners, the competition, and the landscape of contemporary glass. An edited excerpt of that conversation is published in the catalog Emerge/Evolve 2018: A Showcase of Rising and Evolving Talents in Kiln-Glass.

The Shop at Bullseye Projects features exceptional wearables and design objects created from Portland-made Bullseye glass, along with makers whose work aligns with Bullseye Projects exhibition concepts.

In preparation for the holiday season we have expanded our selection at The Shop, and it's the perfect time to introduce you to our full list of designers and craftspeople. 

After eight years at Bullseye Glass Co., Portland-based artist Nathan Sandberg left his position as a technician at the Klaus Moje Center for Research and Education to focus on his studio practice and teaching. Simultaneously, Sandberg launched OnGrade Studio, a branch of his practice that focuses on functional and decorative design. 

As a child, Hungarian artist and designer Marta Edöcs collected glass beads. She would arrange and string them into pieces of jewelry. Years later, after studying drawing and painting in school, she returned to glass and says that the “joy and playfulness” of the material reminded her of the experiences she had as a child. Since then, Edöcs has studied with masters of the material and has distinguished herself as an artist and designer. The Shop at Bullseye Projects is pleased to present a series of jewelry pieces from Edöcs' classic Zen and Shape series as well as pieces from her newest, nature-inspired collection for which she won the Semi Grand Prix Award at the Silver Accessories Contest in Tokyo, Japan.

Marzena Krzemińska-Baluch is an internationally recognized artist based in Wrocław, Poland. She has received numerous grants and awards including Emerging Artist in Residence from Pilchuck Glass School. In 2016, she was the Silver Award winner in Bullseye Glass Company's biennial Emerge competition. Her newest body of work offers unconventional, wall-based glass sculptures comprised of rigid metal frames contrasting with delicately folded glass panels. Combining her work with that of Matthew Day Perez, the exhibition Break, Mend, Fold challenges and celebrates our material assumptions of glass and its properties. In conjunction with the exhibition, I asked Marzena a little about her past and her current studio practice.

"It is the work that must speak, and if the work doesn't speak, nothing can help." - Klaus Moje

In 2012, I was fortunate enough to interview Klaus Moje when he was a juror for Bullseye's Emerge competition. I revisited that interview recently, hunting for pithy quotes that could be held up as examples of his passion for craftsmanship, art, glass, and education. I soon realized, however, that I would not find what I was searching for. Not because he was in any way inarticulate, but because his true eloquence was expressed in the studio and in the classroom; making, forging relationships, and maintaining relentless curiosity.

The Shop at Bullseye Projects presents Chakra Enhancers, a jewelry collection by Brooklyn-based artist and designer Rachel Rader. The collection, an extension of Rader’s ongoing Ancient Truth Investigators (ATI) project, combines metaphysical science fiction with hand-crafted wearable sculptures and jewelry. 

Heidi Schwegler is a self-described city person with an aversion to nature. Despite this, she can regularly be found working in far-flung, remote studios embedded in natural settings. In recent years, she has been a symposium participant at North Lands Creative Glass in the northernmost county of Scotland, was a resident at Yaddo in upstate New York, and was a fellow at the prestigious MacDowell Colony. It is not surprising then, that she recently found herself amongst the Douglas fir trees at Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington.

Collin Richard is the art handler at Bullseye Projects. He came to Portland via the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he earned a BFA in painting with a minor in art history. His array of skills and calm in the face of crisis helps him to manage, maintain, and install/deinstall our large inventory of kilnformed glass work from artists worldwide.

Blake Peterson’s path to Bullseye Projects was circuitous, to say the least: from Ohio, through Iowa, Washington, DC, to Scotland and California. Along the way he earned a BA in psychology; studied printmaking and business; received an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art; and worked at a blue-chip art gallery in San Francisco. Blake’s itinerant history makes him ideal as the first face to greet the many visitors who walk through the double glass doors at our Pearl District projects space.

“She’s Canadian”. That’s what the manager who hired Sarah Douglass almost five years ago replied when I asked him about our new Registrar (now Operations Manager). I assumed that meant she’d say “eh” at the end of her sentences (which she doesn’t) and be unfailingly polite (which she is). Like all national stereotypes, however, the one meant to introduce me to our new team member missed a wealth of qualities that percolate to the surface with every unexpected challenge at Bullseye Projects.

As our Experience Design Director, Nicole Leaper encourages us to engage with our community through communication and art-centered experiences. Her graduate work in video (SAIC) and more recent interdisciplinary graduate degree in information design, user experience design, and business (UO) has armed her with a skill set for storytelling and creating interactions both physical and digital.

As Curator of Bullseye Projects’ gallery operation, lead organizer of its Artist Residency programs, exhibition designer, teacher, and lecturer, Michael Endo’s job has taken him from a musty basement in Portland’s Pearl District to a blanket bog in the Scottish Highlands. His MFA in painting (Cranbrook Academy of Art, 2009) and his 16-year history as an exhibiting artist got him in the door at Bullseye. Once inside, his innovative vision and relentless energy have shaped a program unique in the world of contemporary glass.

Laura O’Quin leads the kids and family programs at Bullseye Projects. With fifteen years of experience in museum education and her recent MFA in Applied Craft + Design, she’s hyper-skilled at tug-boating potentially lethal masses of multigenerational energy through rooms full of delicate objects and into a studio where that enthusiasm takes form in glass. 

 After a Free First Saturday program brought in over a hundred kids, parents, and grandparents, Lani McGregor, Director of Bullseye Projects,  asked her to answer a few questions about the Glass Lab at Bullseye Projects.