I’m going to fast forward. We’re into our third day of the fair and still standing. Despite my incessant kvetching, we managed to get through set-up, get the lights focused, glass cleaned and all the clutter crammed into our tiny stand closet, before dashing back to the flat to change and return in time for Opening Night.

“Can you focus it 2.5 mm to the left and about 1.5mm up, Steve?” Loughlin obsessive? Yet another misunderstood personality.
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Last month I was rudely awakened by the shocking rumor of our corporate-ness.

I’ve been introspecting for the last few weeks, ruminating on this ill-fitting identity . But I do sort of get it. It’s a close cousin of that other curious piece of urban mythology surrounding Bullseye lately: that we’re “elitist”.

Dashing to present our glorious objects at the V & A. We must be just SO cool.
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Factory schmactory. I’m on my way to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to set up Bullseye’s stand at COLLECT, the international art fair for contemporary objects.

Fifteen hours, three airports and a cultural canyon away from Garlic Gulch.
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BEFORE: Ray Ahlgren & Dan Schwoerer, 1973.

After 33 years in business, Bullseye looks a lot different from the outside. But the soul is the same. So now, finally, I get around to the point of this first week of blogs: who we are, who Bullseye is.

Who we are is who we’ve always been: a slightly eccentric little factory driven by people with a lot of energy, passion about glass, some oddball ideas and a commitment to learning. In a serious, relatively professional way.
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Part of Bullseye’s Dream Team: left to right, that’s Erik, Tom, Paul and Nathan, loading a 300 lb casting made up of over 700 individual strips of glass.

Today Bullseye’s Research & Education department has a staff of seven full-time technicians who help artists wrestle through new processes and trouble-shoot old ones. They also develop and teach short courses, test new glasses, brainstorm new methods and document what they learn in technical papers that are distributed free on the internet.
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