Mel George, Landscape for Deborah, 2008
kilnformed glass, 4.25 x 19 x .625 inches
Photo: P. Foster
Portland, OR – Bullseye Gallery is pleased to present Due North, a special exhibit of artists associated with North Lands Creative Glass in Caithness, Scotland, on view January 27 – March 21, 2009.
North Lands Creative Glass is a European center for glass excellence located in the northernmost county of the Scottish Highlands. Since opening ten years ago, its workshops, residencies, and annual conference have drawn artists from around the world to inhale the heady mix of dramatic climate, wild sea, and eccentric villagers and to exhale artwork that reshapes these elements in endlessly variable ways.
For the last seven years Portland’s Bullseye Glass Company has collaborated with the North Lands program, an informal partnership that is reflected in the high percentage of Bullseye’s gallery artists who have journeyed to the remote fishing village in order to work in the North Lands studios. Due North spotlights only a few of these artists and their unique responses to the history, the weather, the landscape, the sheep, and each other.
Mel George distills the landscape into “snapshot memories;” lonely sheep and green fields rendered in a shorthand of color and texture that are as small and packed with emotion as the Highland hills and skies are expansive. For Jane Bruce, the “sense of loss and desolation” is captured in her skeletal house forms which mirror the abandoned crofters’ homes, stone remnants of the infamous eighteenth century Highland Clearances. Louise Tait’s cast glass “Speaking Stones” recall an even earlier era –the Neolithic – that lives on in the many unmarked ritual stone sites peppering the Caithness landscape. But it may be Catharine Newell who best captures the impact of North Lands: “…standing alone on a windswept Caithness cliff compelled me to recognize what a singular existence mine is. I returned home and completely reinvented my life…”
In an ode to one of the world’s most unique artist communities, Bullseye Gallery has gathered works by Bruce (US/UK), Tait (UK), George (USA/Australia), and Newell (USA), along with those of Lisa Cahill (Australia), Deborah Horrell (USA), Steve Klein (USA), Dante Marioni (USA), Robin Provart-Kelly (USA), Bruno Romanelli (UK), and Janice Vitkovsky (Australia).
Reception: Wednesday, February 4, 2009, 5:30 – 7:30 pm
First Thursdays: February 5, 2009 and March 5, 2009 open until 8:00 pm
Benefit Whisky Tasting: Saturday, March 21, 2009 (call 503-227-0222 for details)
Artist Panel: Sunday, March 22, 2009 (call 503-227-2797 for details)
Download: Due North January 6, 2009