Cornell-ish Box by Christine Timmons, mixed-media collage on wood panel (Various papers, vintage fabric-covered buttons, shell button, coral glass, dead leaves, half-cork, wire)
Jesup Gallery
December 14, 2024, through February 4, 2025
Reception: Thursday, January 9, 6-8 pm, in the Trefz Forum; click here for more information.
(Reception kicks off at 6 pm, followed by a conversation between Timmons, Jason Pritchard, and Miggs Burroughs at 7 pm.)
Christine Timmons’ work with collage issues from a lifelong interest and involvement with art, craft, textiles, design, and working with her hands.
"I love getting past the initial uncertainty of beginning a new piece and gradually discovering a path through the labyrinth of building a collage," Timmons said. "While working on a piece, I'm always looking for a visual tension (and harmony) among the elements ― many of them pieces torn from my trove of old monoprints and often papers that I've painted. Most of my collages nowadays are abstract, and I work principally with paper but often combine it with fabric and occasionally with paint and other media and objects."
Before the pandemic, Timmons began learning to work with encaustics (pigmented hot wax), which contain a "mysterious quality" that both intrigues her and informs her art. Unfortunately, Covid shut down the school where she had been studying, putting a pause to her encaustics efforts for quite a while. Recently she has begun taking encaustics workshops again, excited by the prospect of exploring more about combining encaustics with collage.
Left: Evita’s Eyes by Christine Timmons, Mixed-media collage on wood panel (Ticket stub to Evita Peron Museum, Buenos Aires; details of Timmons' photos, various papers, encaustic wax); Right: Christine Timmons
Timmons grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and earned a BA in French from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (with a year abroad at l’Université de Lyon, France) and an MA in French from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The path of her professional career reflected her diverse interests and included teaching French language and literature; working in the Press Bureau at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium; working as a special projects editor for Encyclopaedia Britannica in Chicago; restoring damaged works of art on paper for museums and galleries as an apprentice paper conservator; editing both Fiber Arts and Threads Magazines; and curating art exhibits at The Westport Library for 13 years before retiring in December 2019.
Along the way, she studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and took numerous independent classes in painting, drawing, printmaking, papermaking, photography, jewelry making, bookbinding, and collage at various schools and art centers, among them, Silvermine Arts Center, Creative Arts Workshop, Rowayton Arts Center, Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Pelham Arts Center, and Rye Arts Center.
Timmons began exhibiting her work in 2018. Retirement allowed her to dedicate more time on her own art, which she has exhibited widely in both New York and Connecticut. She is an exhibiting member of both the Mamaroneck Artists Guild in Larchmont, New York, and the Rowayton Arts Center.
