You don’t hear the morning rise, you feel it’s awakening by the sound of its stillness. These quiet moments are mine to move in. Resting with the night chill on a tiled bathroom floor, I would turn the hot water to a low tickle, blending the sound of it’s falling with the steam it produced. Here was my place to think, hope, create and carve my visions from the air around me in its shifting patterns of heated softness. Tracing my thoughtlines to match the movements of the condensing steam I could map the dawning of my awareness. Dreams of where I come from to those of where I want to go.
Remembering those moments from afar, where memory only has a taste of what it once was. These are the instances I try to capture, small reflections that carry the meanings of where I am in the twilight of my rising.
As a child I used to sit with my mother as she planned, planted and cared for the garden that was her place to be. I listened to her stories, the collections of her life swirling around the colors she was tending. This garden can not be forgotten as it lives within me, waiting for my becoming to spread its seeds through the weavings of my life.
To feel a life is to know it’s strengths as well as its weaknesses. I hoped by writing down all my dark secrets, white lies and blue thoughts, I might be able to see them in a different light. Knowledge is such a tool that when used to create one concrete thing you find the softness in another.
To understand what a blind man feels is to know what a shadowless sky looks like. It carries the light before the last rain. We can not control the seasonal passings but we can harvest our memories and collect our autumns to understand our falls.
To summon the year rings of ones life is to measure the depths of ones shadows. These works form the songlines of my imagination. Gathered together they create a assemblage of my family, friends and loves. A blueprint for a blessing, a life lived.
Timothy Persons
Q&A between artist Timothy Persons and curator Hasse Persson
Persson: Timothy, you were as an young artist growing up in Southern California in the 1960’s and in the 1970’s, which at the time was an important centre for an alternative artscene different from New York. Artists like Ed Ruscha, James Turell, Bill Viola, Charles Ray, Robert Irwin and Ed Kienholz made their early careers on the American westcoast. How did their names influence your career as an artist?
Persons: Unlike New York, Los Angeles and most of the westcoast art scene in the late 60’s and early 70’s was fairly provincial, a local market and represented by a handful of respected galleries. Los Angeles became to be recognized as an alternative art scene more so because it was so damn difficult to survive and most artists would experiment with whatever was available. James Turell was my personal favourite as he did workshops at the Claremont Graduate School where I was attending. Turrell went beyond the object into a conceptual realm using light as his vehicle. I’m still working today with light and its reflections as my central issue.
Persson: Australian contemporary artist Tracey Moffatt – an aboriginal on her mother’s side – was adopted as a child by a white family as a part of a national program to "help" the indigenous population in Australia. This trauma has fuelled her own career as an artist and given her material in her work. Being adopted yourself, has this also been a part of your own creative process?
Persons: I have used my adoption as one of the more positive elements of my life. My adopted parents created an environment for me from which I was able to establish the emotional and creative tones of whom I am today.
Persson: In the series of works "Reflections from my mother’s garden" You have made loving references to your adopted mother in California. Could you elaborate about this fact?
Persons: The series "Reflections from my mother’s garden" came several years after my mother’s death. Unfortunately in life we sometimes fail to appreciate those small emotional gems that were handed to us when we were young. In retrospect, I see my conversations with my mother around her garden as being some of the most intimate and emotional times we shared. Here she was one with herself, lending me her strength to help me exercise my sensibility which has become the backbone of my work.
Persson: Being a great fan of minimalist artists like Ad Reinhardt I am particularly moved by your minimalist works with raindrops on plexiglass. If there ever was an expression called Organic Minimalism, This would be IT. Can you tell me how this series came about and how they are produced?
Persons: The raindrop-series evolved out of the idea of trying to capture the magic of a moment when the object meets its shadow. By harvesting the first or last raindrops into a piece of plexiglass, the drops in their drying leave a trace of where they have been. By filling in these traces with a hard clear lacquer I capture their reflection at the moment they create their shadow.
Persson: I can notice from your early paintings that You over the years have become a more "harmonic" artist. Does this come from living in Finland and close to nature or are there other reasons for this development?
Persons: I find that question amusing. I’m a lot of things but "harmonic" would not be one of them. My works have matured over the years and I hope I will have the strength to break what ever mode or label I find myself in.
Persson: Tell me if I am wrong, but melancholy seems to be part of the Finnish mood of expression, but I don’t see that in your works. What emotions and ideas are your main sources in the artistic process?
Persons: I was raised with an optimistic toughness that doesn’t have much room for anything else. As for my source of ideas I feel it’s a blending of emotional intelligence with a sensibility to question those experiences and observations both past and present. I seek to find the poetry between the two translating that into a visual language.
Persson: It is relatively easy to live and work in megacities like Los Angeles and New York, where the energy level is high and one can recharge one’s own battery by being a part of a greater artscene. Yet, You have as an American done your best works living in Finland. Where do You get Your well documented energy from?
Persons: Hell, I don’t know. If I did I would package it and sell it to others. Seriously, I think my role as an educator, working with young people, has done more to keep me active intellectually and emotionally than anything else.
Persson: Besides being an important artist in your own right, You have also been instrumental in promoting Finnish photobased art especially former and present students from University of Art and Design Helsinki. How does this crossover activities influenced your work?
Persons: What I’ve learned the most as an artist and producer is that anything is possible when working with creative people. The secret is in having a vision of what you want. Learning how to share that vision is the difference between being successful or not. Therefore, the bridge between the having and the sharing is communication. I thrive on the exchange of these ideas as they keep my eye fresh and mind moving.
Persson: Being in an age where You can look back, but also with certain confidence look ahead to the future, where do You see yourself as an artist in ten to twenty years from today?
Persons: I have learned through experience that you can’t predict the creative process. My hope for the future artistically is to keep it as close to a way of life as possible. To ask questions and then have the patience to listen for the answers. The will to create not to copy or follow someone else’s "isms" takes intelligence and a lot of heart…I hope I will have the courage to use and to follow my own.
Hasse Persson
Artistic director
Hasselblad Center
SWEDEN
