Timothy Ely, Juror
Colfax, Washington

Timothy Ely earned his MFA in Design in 1975. Following graduate school Ely began a self-motivated study of bookbinding. He began to fabricate the work he is known for today, a fusion of largely English style binding techniques with visionary drawings of an unknowable future. With an NEA grant [1982] he traveled to Japan, Italy and England studying bookbinding and papermaking. Following this he moved to New York where he established a studio and also taught at the Center for Book Arts. During this decade in New York, he traveled to Europe, Central America and Scandinavia lecturing, exhibiting and teaching. He has had numerous solo exhibitions and has participated in many group exhibitions. His two most recent exhibitions were at the Jundt Museum of Art and The Northwest Museum of Art and Culture. His work is collected planet wide and is held in public, private, and secret collections. He currently lives in Eastern Washington near the Colfax River. He is represented by Ursus Books in New York.

Website: timothyely.com

Angle of Emergence

This book of collograph prints is a base for a series of drawings. The printing ink was made of material gathered from a Utah trip in 2009. It is pulverized and then sifted to the finest grit before grinding. It is a beautiful iron oxide color and very durable. Burnt plate oil and a bit of cobalt drier and a modifier made the surface a vigorously textured entity from which to pull the paper responses. The drawings are developed from the inky prints with ink and pastel and some watercolor. Angle of Emergence resolves and projects some of the ideas I have about architectural space and how it affects me. The box space below the baseplate which supports the book, contains a small edifice of wood and paint and also playfully restates my fondness for the record album Led Zeppelin III. This album cover contained a rotatable collage wheel. Only very small bits of an extensive collage could be revealed unless one cut into the album. I liked the value of most of this image being concealed and so the box for Angle of Emergence reveals only a very small part of the entire architectural model. The exterior of the box carries a pastel drawing of an asemic cribriform formation. The binding is drum leaf version 4, an occluded variant. Polygons surround small mylar paintings and the surfaces are a gleaning and mixing of various studio aggregates which have cured into an extremely durable binding material.
Paper, reinforced commercial binders board, inks (various), pigments, wax, wood, gold.
8 x 16 x 2.75 inches; 20.5 x 35.5 x 7 centimeters. Created 2009.