Portland, OR –Bullseye Projects presents a group exhibition of works that blend printmaking and technology with kiln-glass, featuring Erin Dickson, Michelle Murillo, Jeffrey Sarmiento, and Kathryn Wightman. Hidden Narratives will be on view March 30 – June 18, 2016
Impermeable except by light, windows allow us to see the world outside or the world within. The stories on the other side of the glass unfold like silent movies; movement and stillness imply narrative. We are only privy to glimpses and beyond what is apparent are hidden histories, relationships, personal experience, and emotional stories. Artists Erin Dickson, Michelle Murillo, Jeffrey Sarmiento, and Kathryn Wightman create images on and with glass that draw on these hidden narratives, presenting works that push past the inherent shallowness of image into the murky space that gives meaning to the things we see.
Using intricately cut strips of glass, Erin Dickson recreates the exterior views from the homes in which she has lived. These commonplace scenes, removed from the context of the home, are a form of biography. Artist Michelle Murillo, during a 2015 residency at the Bullseye Resource Center Bay Area, created two bodies of work - Adrift and Waypoints – that attempt to reconcile her family’s documented history with the conflicting genetic history that was revealed through DNA testing. By incorporating her family’s reproduced and fabricated travel documents into glass installations Murillo says she has “created maps – both literal and metaphorical – of my shifting identity.” Similarly, New Zealand-based Kathryn Wightman draws on her family’s history for Stained (2015), using screen-printed glass powder to recreate a carpet from her grandmother’s home. In the work stains interrupt the pattern, chronicling the effects of human interaction on the objects we live with. Jeffrey Sarmiento is known for works that challenge our perception of things based on where we are and where we are from. Flutter (2015) conflates an Eyed Hawk-Moth with a common Blue Butterfly, creating a hybrid form that transforms as the viewer moves.
