Category: The Arts

I found this Thor Hammer Mug in a box of toys I had been keeping from my childhood. It is the first ceramic piece I ever made and had fired. I remember making it at age 12 during a summer art camp. I was in to Thor comics, so between my seventh and eighth grades this is what I made. The under-glazes were mislabeled in the studio, so the colors didn’t turn out how I wanted. I think this is the only piece from anyone at the camp that didn’t explode during firing.

That was a great summer being a crazy kid. The summer art camp was held each morning at Mission College, which at the time was surrounded by open fields, and was just one big building. I was in the camp with four of my school buddies, and we were at the very upper age limit for the camp. We got bored pretty easily (Something that at this age happened a lot). By the end of the summer we had to be escorted out of the building by the instructor after each class, because we were causing so much trouble.

We had a habit of taking clay with us from the studio for our mischief. We would shape the clay into what we thought were funny shapes, then fling off the upper stories of the building watching the splat down in the atrium somewhere. Some college students had the pleasure of seeing a clay Mr. Bill explode on the ground next to them as they walked to class. That was when security was called on us and discussions were held. We relished the infamy.

We had a lot of fun. I remember the face painting lesson became war paint day for us. Can you imagine four young boys with war paint running around? I am sure there were some confused people walking through campus those days. Mostly we went out to the fields around the college to “hunt” rabbits. We had created spears, carried rocks, and made traps, but mostly we just ran around like crazy kids trying to scare the wildlife (and any passers-by). We also got the police called on us a few times by poor old pedestrians who thought we were hunting them. Ah, the memories.

Amazing what an old mug can stir up.

In preparation for Halloween; The Timo’Lantern!

Art of Timo; the title of my site, has evolved to mean a great many things in the years. I am now in the home stretch of earning my MFA from SJSU, so this thing “art” has finally become an official qualification in my work. I am an artist and I make art. And I finally feel empowered by that discretion; it’s ambiguity and lack of concrete description means something important to me now after these years of study.

The MFA itself isn’t what makes me feel like I can employ the word now. It is the discourse I became involved with in order to earn my MFA that gives “art” weight. There are meaningful ways in which to indulge in the creative process, and that is what I  lingering on in art. Objects are gone. Process is gone. Studios are gone. What we can have is an endeavor to create meaningful indulgence.

We seem to need art as creatures, and that is intriguing.  We inevitably treat it as a commodity to gobble up, or a resource to manipulate and control, but there is something under all that, which plugs in to how we understand ourselves. Art can become the cleanest and best description of those inaccessible parts of who we are.

As I finish this degree, I have a new basis from which to work. In my personal life, too, I have found a very deep strength that challenges me to perceive life in new ways. I am in a new place now, and this website will soon reflect that. Over the course of the summer I will be putting something together to replace all of this, so take a note to check back in September. It will be good.