Posts by Lani McGregor

“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. 

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

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.