Out of Office is a new GeekWire series spotlighting the passions and hobbies that members of the Seattle-area tech community pursue outside of work.
Name: Bergen McMurray.
Day job: Principal technical program manager at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in Seattle.
Out-of-office passion: Creating unique wall art using scientific specimens (bugs, bones, and butterflies).
McMurray has an extensive background in tech and science in Seattle, with stints at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, at her own nonprofit biotech startup called HiveBio, and at Tableau Software. At Oracle, she specializes in workflow management, system design and automation.
On the weekends she handles bugs that aren’t in software.
McMurray and her artistic partner Bevin Duncan are the founders of Ebb & Bone, a collaboration that regularly takes them to art shows and festivals. Their work features neatly framed spiders, butterflies, beetles, cockroaches, small mammal skulls, snake skeletons and other upcycled objects foraged in the woods or claimed from decommissioned entomology collections.
“I love anything that is the juxtaposition between beautiful and spooky,” McMurray said. “We call it dead things art.”
McMurray is dead serious about sourcing her subject matter ethically and sustainably and not messing with any existing ecosystems. She doesn’t want bugs or anything else that have been raised just to be killed.
Some of the skulls might feature dried flowers or attached crystals. Most are displayed on printed backgrounds. Ebb & Bone pieces, which average around $75, are kept simple on purpose.
“The specimens are good enough on their own,” McMurray said, pointing to a very large orb weaver. “This spider does not need anything else, really. He just needs to be composed in a way that emphasizes his natural beauty.”
Most rewarding aspect of this pursuit: McMurray enjoys getting viewers of her art to rethink how they look at things. It can be unsettling to be up close to a giant spider or beetle, or an animal’s skull. Many people would rather turn away.
“I like getting people to think, ‘Oh, there is beauty here that I just wasn’t taking the time to stop and look and think about,'” McMurray said. “So I like helping people, kind of shocking them out of their worldview.”
The lessons she brings back to work: Like a lot of tech workers, McMurrary spends much of her time sitting in front of a computer. Her artwork is a chance to make something with her hands that she can touch and feel.
But her technical program management work and her artistic endeavor both involve coming up with creative solutions for what she called “weird processes.” Solving the problem around how to display a rabbit skull artfully or how to source certain insects sustainably teaches McMurrary skills that she uses to creatively tackle issues at work.
“Also we are always having weird conversations with strangers, which I love,” she said. “The social skills that that reinforces are very necessary for the influencing without authority that one has to do as a program manager. … It’s an industry term, I did not make that up!”
Do you have an out-of-office hobby or interesting side hustle that you’re passionate about that would make for a fun profile on GeekWire? Drop us a line: tips@geekwire.com.
