Our Inspiration
The inspiration for X Gallery is Roger Hull, Professor Emeritus of Art History at Willamette University and Faculty Curator of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem, Oregon. During his career, Roger wrote several monographs on canonical Northwest artists. As he researched each book and sought study access to the work of the artists he was writing about, he found that the work was often dispersed and difficult to locate or challenging to retrieve. That records had been lost or scattered. That the work of preservation and storytelling was also the humble work of storage and documentation, the often intensely personal work of engaging with artists and their families, and the complex interdisciplinary work of displaying, donating, selling, and managing artwork to ensure that the legacy of an artist is carried forward. X Gallery founder Zach Hull internalized his father’s work as he watched the Hallie Ford Museum be strategized and built, edited his father’s books, and spent countless hours in museums and galleries, talking to artists and collectors about art, and looking, looking, looking. X Gallery is built on this history.
Our Team
Our team is committed to active engagement with art as it goes through its life transitions, and we have the expertise to support you as you successfully navigate the various concerns involved with managing your art needs. We look forward to serving you.
Jennifer Viviano, Managing Director
Jennifer is an artist and designer bringing a range of interests to the position of Managing Director. Her affinity for objects as well as the social and conceptual relationships that are built around them, drive her interest not only in art but in the ecosystem of cultural life—the very community she served through her design studio. Running a small business for many years, working closely with philanthropic and non-profit groups, and articulating ideas and stories for these organizations brings focus to how she steers X Gallery. The basis of her studio practice is amassing collections, making multiples, and addressing what we can’t see—a perfect metaphor for X Gallery, where she is responsible for what she calls “the secret life of art.” She holds an MFA in Applied Craft and Design and studied art history with Roger Hull at Willamette University.
Ashton Hull, Owner, Managing Director ReSale Art Gallery
Ashton brings a life-long love of storytelling to all the work she does. Trained in costume design at Carnegie Mellon University, her education from the beginning has been centered on the arts—visual arts, applied arts, and performing arts. Ashton’s professional experience includes work in film and television in Los Angeles, freelance costume design in Portland, and theater production and management at Lewis & Clark College. She is a native of the Pacific Northwest growing up in Washington and now making her home in Salem, Oregon. Her programming expertise adds to X Gallery’s ability to bring to life the experience of people interacting with art and ideas.
Maria Mapes, Collections Manager
Maria comes to X Gallery with many years of experience working with museum and library art collections. Having been involved with moving the collections of The J. Paul Getty Museum and the works on paper collection of the University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach, she has an eye for detail to the physical space of the vault and knowledge of best practices for collection storage and art handling. In addition, she has considerable knowledge of data as it relates to art collections having worked at migrating the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection database and from work as a project manager at Luna Imaging migrating library and museum data systems into Luna’s digital asset system. Her undergraduate work was in photography at Parsons School of Design and her graduate work in Museum Studies was at California State University.
Zachary Hull, Owner, President
As the son of an art historian and an artist, president Zach Hull brings a deep and tacit understanding of the life cycle of art and objects, and the many ways in which individuals and communities interact with them. As the second generation of Oregonians deeply involved in the art community, his respect for and knowledge of Northwest regional art is richly informed by his parents’ study and practice. His own background in literature, art, law, marketing, technology, and business strategy give him a unique vantage point from which to process the stories, need for care, and passages—both inherited and commercial—embedded in our material legacy.
Rebecca Gilbert, Project Manager and Archive Consultant
Rebecca brings her experience as a small business owner and non-profit administrator to her work at X Gallery. She is a co-owner of a letterpress printing business that specializes in working with musicians and artists and has been involved in founding and growing three small community arts non-profit organizations (The Independent Publishing Resource Center, C.C. Stern Type Foundry, and Partners in Print). Dedicated to the documentation of our cultural subjective histories, Rebecca’s current focus is working with career documentation for artists and artists archives. She has worked with the library collections at the Oregon Historical Society and as a volunteer at the Multnomah County Library Special Collections. Rebecca holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from PNCA, where her studies integrated community publishing, graphic design and book arts.
Michael Smythe, Owner, CFO
A historian, with a Masters in Radio, TV and Film turned MBA, Michael has spent 20 years as a financial analyst, consultant, and CFO for a diverse set of companies all over the world including Deloitte, Virgin Media, Clear, and Azlo. He is an art collector and is committed to the cultural life of our region. Michael currently sits on the Art Committee of the Multnomah Athletic Club.
Roger and Bonnie Hull
Professor Emeritus of Art History at Willamette University, Roger Hull (1943-2023) enjoyed a 40-year career teaching art history and affecting the lives of his many students who now number among the leadership community of the national art world. The instigator of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, he recognized that the Pacific Northwest made—and continues to make—vibrant contributions to the national art dialogue and championed an institutional showcase to make sure that story was told. Roger continues robust work as an author of monographs illuminating the canonical artists of the Northwest, including Jan Zach, Carl Hall, Nelson Sandgren, Charles Heaney, George Johanson, Louis Bunce, Harry Widman, Manuel Izquierdo, Henk Pander, and Lucinda Parker.
Artist Bonnie Hull has a vital body of work including drawings, paintings, and more recently a fiber practice that translates her rich visual vocabulary to quilt work. Her artistic work has both been inspired by and responds to her integral involvement in the historic preservation of neighborhoods, gardens, and community experience in the Salem, Oregon area. Bonnie spent many years running a small business in Salem which was another extension of her prolific practice. Her blog following Northwest art has become an archive of shows, artists, and inspirations for living a creative life.
Their continued inspiration, support, and expertise are woven into the fabric of the company.