An Expeditionary Journal: Installation at the White Stag Block, Portland, Aug.- Sept. 2009

The School of Architecture and Allied Arts in Portland invites you stop by and see recent work produced in the UO Portland Fab Lab by Brian Gillis, UO Professor of Art, and Mike Miller, Associate Professor of Art at the University of Illinois – Springfield

Collecting was fashionable throughout Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. They were idiosyncratic accumulations of unusual natural specimens, scientific contraptions, and rare and exotic works of art. Exploration of the New World, Africa, and Asia brought evidence of unknown cultural and natural realities, while scientific investigations suggested new knowledge of the physical world. We view our time in the new Fab Lab facility at the White Stag Block as an investigative journey. We set out with no driving imagery, narrative, or theoretical framework, only the unfettered pursuit of every lead that interested us. The imagery we happened upon ended up being iconic, spectacular, and ephemeral…a start-up curiosity cabinet for the 21st century. As with the Wunderkammer of old, “curiosity” suggests both the extraordinary qualities of the objects in the collection and the broader curiosity that fuels the human search for knowledge.
Brian Gillis, Mike Miller

“… a goodly, huge cabinet, wherein whatsoever the hand of man by exquisite art or engine has made rare in stuff, form or motion; whatsoever singularity, chance, and the shuffle of things hath produced; whatsoever Nature has wrought in things that want life and may be kept; shall be sorted and included.” – Francis Bacon, “Wunderkammer”