About:
Born in Tennessee, Timothy Massey was raised on a 30 acre farm in Seven Islands, a remote area somewhere between Knoxville and the Great Smoky Mountains (his mother called it the “back of beyond). He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking and Drawing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking from The Ohio State University. Afterwards he took on several one-year and one-semester university teaching jobs, as well as some freelance exhibit design and fabrication gigs for nearly a decade. During that time he also began teaching Printmaking during the summers at the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts, a position he held for 12 years.
In 1995, Massey accepted the position of Exhibition Coordinator for the Ewing Gallery, University of Tennessee, where he designed and installed a variety of exhibitions and assisted in the management of a collection of over 6,000 artworks and artifacts for roughly 6 years. In 2001, he accepted the position of Director of the Tower Fine Arts Gallery at SUNY Brockport and subsequently became coordinator of the Drawing concentration. Prior to retirement, he also took on coordination of the Printmaking concentration. During his 21-year career at Brockport, he curated and/or organized over 120 exhibitions in the Tower Fine Arts Gallery and worked with administration to establish a dedicated storage facility for the University’s Art Collection. He also served a 3 1/2 year stint as Chair of the Department of Art. Upon retirement, Timothy Massey has returned to Seven Islands where he has established the Lucky Dawg Studios and Printshop, and several projects are in the works.
Current Statement:
If ants move their eggs and climb, rain is coming anytime.
When eager bites the thirsty flea, clouds and rain you sure shall see.
When spiders' webs in air do fly, the spell will soon be very dry.
Low over the grass the swallows wing, and crickets, too, how sharp they sing.
When the head of the household dies, one must go out and whisper the news of the death to the bees, or all in the home will meet the same fate.
American Proverbs
The current series of drawings and prints, Natural Instinct, are interpretive studies of growth, decay and regeneration cycles of natural forms/inhabitants in the environment. I am also interested in imagery that is motivated by curiosity and recollection fostered by a rich tradition of written and oral histories, such as the apocryphal American Proverbs. Being a native southerner, I have an understanding and background in such belief systems, ranging from superstitions regarding weather, planting seasons, suspicious tall tales of derring-do, premonitions and symbols of good or ill fate, to curious religious convictions and rituals.
Although mostly developed by observational processes, these works are also counterintuitive in that the final image tends to deviate from the natural, and the “environment” takes on a sometimes different and initially unintended persona…an instinct. While work materials utilized are basic, the transformative nature of application is very important to the process. For me, an artist who draws and prints, art happens in the making…in the studio. Once making is done, there is only evidence. The final result serves as an object//remnant/document that has recorded the integrity of thought and activity, and stands as proof that something has taken place.