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Art Interview: Can you tell me what it was like for you when you were growing up?
Tim Tate: I grew up in Washington, DC. My parents were both brought up in very religious circumstances. My father's family was Southern Baptist and evangelist and on my mother's side they were Hasidic Jews. Because of their personal experiences I was raised an atheist. Their defection from organized religion pushed them to take us to a huge array of temples, churches, and synagogues so that we could become familiar with all the different rituals without connecting to an organized religion. We became Buddhists for about 10 years and those experiences and teachings are the basis for a lot of the strange works I made as I was growing up. In my mind it was a really great way to grow up and it gave me a worldly perspective on religion.
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Tim Tate
Rubber Gloves
Glass
14" x 7" x 7"
Courtesy of the artist |
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Art Interview: Would you say your current work is influenced by religion?
Tim Tate: I would say that it is very ritual-based and heavily ritual-influenced. My work is secularly based and people write about my work and extract a lot of different perspectives from it. For example, when I use a Red Cross, I use it as an image of healing. A lot of people take that image and overlay it with their own religious viewpoints and backgrounds but don' t realize that I have no particular religious background and that I was bought up with a view of the full spectrum. When people ask me what religion I am, I say I am mosaic because I have a piece of all the religions.
Art Interview: What did your parents do for a living?
Tim Tate: Strangely, my father worked for the Pentagon and my mother was an artist.
Art Interview: Did your mother show in galleries?
Tim Tate: No, she was a craftsman so she never showed her work in galleries. She gave me a love of making objects and I grew up making objects out of every possible material available.
Art Interview: Did your parents influence your artistic abilities?
Tim Tate: Of course. I learned to master so many materials that it gave me this mental log that I could refer back to and still do.
Art Interview: Did you attend an art school or university?
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Tim Tate
Two Paths Taken
Glass
14" x 7" x 7"
Courtesy of the artist |
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Tim Tate: No, I never studied sculpture. I am self-taught in the sense that I only went to schools that offered workshops, not accredited universities. I made vessels for a long time and was simply a craftsman making an object. Then I was diagnosed with HIV and I started looking at my craft in a different way. Instead of making functional vessels I looked for more meaning in what I was making. One of the important pieces that I made in the early days of my diagnosis was a double glass dome, where inside the core sat a Magic Eight Ball that stood for the divination of life. On the inner circle etched on the glass was the story of what happened 23 years ago when I found out I was HIV positive. Etched on the outside surface of the piece was the story of what my life would have been like had I not been diagnosed. That was when my work began to tell the story of how my life was splintered in two that day.
Art Interview: Having such an illness can dramatically change the direction an artist takes. Was that the case for you; was there a dramatic change?
Tim Tate: Yes, it was an extremely dramatic change for me. Before I was diagnosed I was happy making craft and being a craftsman. I then realized that I was starting to make sculptural pieces that were touching on how I felt at that time. The first series that I made after that event were specifically, though very tentatively, expressing HIV and how I was personally dealing with it. I spent almost a year exploring those feelings. Most of my work doesn't deal with that so heavily anymore. I deal with many different topics, but at that time I was working through my own trauma. I believe that I healed myself mentally with the art I was making and I do believe that art heals in many different ways. There is the process of creating art that is healing and then there is the healing that occurs when a person views a piece of work and emotionally identifies and interacts with it.
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Tim Tate
Heart of Glass Denied
Glass
13" x 6"x 6"
Courtesy of the artist |
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Art Interview: Which galleries are currently representing you?
Tim Tate: I have several galleries over here in the States. I'm represented by Fraser Gallery in Washington, Maurine Littleton Gallery, and Jane Sauer Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I am under consideration by 5 more. What I really need now is European representation. At the moment I feel somewhat as though I have struck a new cord with art. I am showing a lot of new video work. If you can imagine the pieces, glass domes with small TV screens inside playing video and then a lot of text. It's a combination of a very traditional glass blowing method with new media. The video works received a strong response very quickly. Almost 75% of my work these days is video and interactive electronic pieces.
Art Interview: Are you living solely from the sales of your artwork?
Tim Tate: Yes, I've been a full-time artist for several years now. One of the first pieces that I made went straight into the Smithsonian-Renwick Museum and after that I got into a lot of museums including the American Art Museum and the Mint Museum. I also founded the Washington Glass School and we have grown into being the second largest warm glass school in the US.
Art Interview: Going from being a self-taught artist to running a school is quite a big step. How did you manage that?
Tim Tate: Well, when I first started it wasn't that big a deal because it was very small. The main reason we started the school was because there were no glass schools in Washington, DC at that time - there weren't even glass programs. If I wanted to learn a new technique I had to go to glass workshops that were outside the DC area, do a course for a week and then come back. When we decided our own school we focused on technical skills. We had very small classes in the beginning and then we just started to double our number students. We have been doubling in size every year for the last six years. Now we have 6,500 sq ft of space and have taught over 3,000 students in 300 classes.
Art Interview: How did you learn glassblowing?
Tim Tate: I didn't start glass blowing until I was diagnosed HIV positive. I remembered when I was a kid I visted the Corning Glassworks and it left a huge impression on me. Then I discovered Penland School of Crafts in the mountains of North Carolina. All that I am as an artist stems from my visits to this school…a total of 26 times. I will actually be teaching there for the first time this summer. My life will go full circle. After that I started to practice on my own. It just went on from there. One thing I will say is that I do not view myself as a glassblower. I am a very good sculptor and I have always learned exactly what I needed to in order to make the pieces that I wanted. If somebody were to ask me to blow a huge goblet right now I'd say ”Oh you're kidding, I have no idea.”
Art Interview: A lot of people have a prejudice against glass. They say its craft, that it's not fine art and it doesn't belong in the galleries. How do you respond to that?
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Therman Statom
Ladder
1980s
Glass
16 X 2 X 90 inches |
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Tim Tate: That is something that I deal with a lot. While I totally believe fine craft and fine art are equal, there are many galleries and museums that have no-glass policies and in some respects I understand why. If you look at 90% of glass over the last 40 years it has been technique driven, focusing mostly on vessels. There are of course notable exceptions, such as Therman Statum.
The history of studio art glass only really goes back as far as the 1970's. Before that you had to work in a factory to have access to glass. And factories like Steuben and Tiffany would make 500 lamps or vases. No one was making one of a kind studio art glass (with very few exceptions). But with the advent of computers it suddenly became accessible to universities and smaller studios. At first most glass blowers were mimicking the old Tiffany and Lalique pieces of the past. It was all about technique but slowly and surely people started to use glass as a sculptural medium, which then led to there being this huge crossover between fine artists and incredible craftsmen. I let other people define the category that I am in and I show my work in both fine art galleries and fine craft galleries and I think it is the easiest way of approaching the situation. Recently a critic at the Washington Post called me “the missing link between fine art and fine craft” which is a great compliment. I think I have managed to straddle both ”genres” over the years without ever being pigeon holed into either one.
Art Interview: When we were judging the Art Interview - 7th International Online Artist Competition that you won, one of the five judges was very against the glasswork that we had coming in. He claimed that glass is a craft and not a valid fine art. But we decided to look at the glasswork as a sculptural medium and I believe we came to the right decision. Because your work excelled sculpturally and because the materials you chose to work with further enhanced your sTatement we decided to award you with first place.
Tim Tate: I was so honored by that….what a wonderful surprise. It's very exciting to be on the leading edge of this movement. Combining my work with video has pushed me farther in the art world than I thought possible. I just showed at Art Basel-Miami. Right now, if you are working in hot sculptural glass then it is almost impossible to be derivative as there is nothing to be derivative of. It is a time for glass where the newest beginner can come up with a technique or form that has never been explored.
Art Interview: Has that helped you in the museum sector?
Tim Tate: It has both helped and hindered me. The same attitude exists in museums. For example, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC has a no-glass policy. They are slowly shifting on that idea because they are seeing all the new work that is coming out. They have asked me for images of my work but that has taken a very long time. On the other side of the coin, you can be at another gallery with your work and glass will have such a mystique about it that it can help you get recognized.
Art Interview: You say you have been living from your art for quite a while now, how did that come about?
This oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with Tim Tate on May 26, 2007. The interview took place over the telephone between New York, New York, USA, and Washington D.C., USA and was conducted by Brendan Davis for Art Interview Online Magazine. The biography introducing Tim Tate at the beginning of this interview was written by Steve Schepens and Ekaterina Rietz-Rakul for Art Interview Online Magazine.
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