ARTIST BIO
Timothy Baum, a self-portrait photograph. 2020
I was born in the 1950s, the youngest of their three children, and enjoyed a free and beautiful childhood in the suburbs of midwestern Ohio. I was fortunate to receive music lessons and to discover drawing at an early age.
My parents were highly capable and intelligent people that worked in engineering and medicine, who also loved and participated in creative pursuits such as carpentry and music.
As time went on, the opportunities for materials, tools, and space were subject to change, as were my motivations for practicing these forms of expression -- from humor to grief, and glorification and simplification of complex ideas -- but, more often than not, things began as a question and then progressed to an experiment, the results being observed and developed for use in story-making.
Art is somewhat like second-hand smoke; and the consequences to those in the vicinity of art-making are broad.
I remember traveling with my family as a child in the 1950s and 60s -- driving across the country and back -- the youngest and smallest, riding in the rear-facing seat that looked out at one of the travel trailers my father had built in the driveway. This was his nature: to build things, to construct, to design. After all, he was an electrical and aeronautical engineer by trade. In that back seat, bored to creativity, I discovered that I could amuse myself by drawing stick figures of armies in battle.
We traveled a lot, so I honed my craft. I became more efficient in my use of color and space and form, and was able to convey more complex stories and emotions. I was beginning to make art.
The best draughtsman I ever met was a kid in high school, Alex Velzy (aka Alex Grey). He later became known for his artistic visions and illustrations of the spiritual within mankind.
People tend to wonder if artists are born or made. For me, it was both.
At some point in the mid-2000s, on my very last half-day of work at the glass foundry, I came home to find my truck had been stolen. Things were tight. I needed money. In desperation, I reached out to a friend to get a job for me at an extremely remote illegal grow. I took watercolors and paper for artistic experimentation if I’d get the chance. I wanted to capture something I had never seen in our local Humboldt County art presentations: the locally-pervasive cultural icon that is marijuana. It turns out that it’s extremely difficult to render properly with watercolor, so I moved to a spray paint technique based on monoprinting. I was there, working, making art, for six months. (The cops eventually found my truck.)
So I work like it matters, even though it doesn't: Blue-collar art opportunities are rarely missed.
It’s almost like a compulsion to explore and express through creative works. In the 1990s, while working at CPR Aquatics, after a long shift making specialty fish tanks and filters, I’d be up till any hour of the night cutting and gluing acrylic scrap to make cities I’d later assemble and illuminate. Then I’d clean up the shop and start a new work day after a few hours of rest. Later, at Mad River Glass, I was lucky enough to be able to make my own molds and pour from the last drips of hot glass after George Bucquet and I would finish pouring his famous pieces.
The best times I ever had could be considered by another their worst. One man’s ceiling can be another man’s floor. And vice-verse.
Though humble, I have had a rich variety of experiences in life and I consider it a privilege to have been allowed to make the most of them through art.
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I want to thank Martha Koplin of Koplin Gallery (more recently known as Koplin Del Rio Gallery) for pushing me to get this online. Without her encouragement and continued appreciation of my art, it is likely that I would not have so readily expended the vast energy required for such a task. My daughters have also been an integral part of this journey, and I am grateful for them. I’ve been featured in shows and galleries in the past (see Exhibitions) but have taken a more solitary approach in the past couple of decades. Feel free to contact me if you're interested in showing or purchasing my available work.