Timothy Horn: ‘Bitter Suite’…the road trip and install

Tim has just sent through snaps of his exhibition Bitter Suite  (installed at the de Young in San Franscisco) along with a trailer of “the courier’s tale” – which sets such a marvellous scene that we wanted to share it with you direct, sans filtering…

And, it goes without saying, his Diadem (light heavyweight)  has been inducted post haste into our chandelier files…

 

 

 

The Gang loved this email –  we could imagine ourselves in the passenger seat, trucking across those wide open spaces…and yes, to save any confusion, these delectable objéts are indeed made of sugar (except Sweet Thing)…

The carriage and chandelier traveled perfectly the 1500 bumpy miles. I did fear the heat of desert, crossing Utah and Nevada, so thought it better to travel at night, getting up at 2am. Though checking the interior of the truck during the day, it didn’t heat up too much, and everything seemed fine, so I continued on. Took 2 and half days to get there. The landscape was incredible, and worth the drive for that alone. Took Route 50, described as the loneliest highway in the US. Usually when you cross a state border, a visitor center is right there to welcome you. Not Utah, lots of useful signage, but no VC, WC or any services for the next 40 miles. Did love Utah: scorched, parched landscape, with minerals leached to the surface that glow like uranium, very trippy, or was it just that I’d been driving all day… and Mom’s Cafe in Salina where I had a BLT and slice of Coconut Creme Pie, and called it dinner. Nothing better than entering Nevada at dawn, having passed through a canyon of stacked cubes of rock. Probably could have chosen a better route with smoother road surfaces when it came to California. No longer fearing arriving with crates full of syrup, I did fear crumbs with the bumpy road. The south side of Tahoe was pretty rough, though the Lake and surrounding mountains stunning to see. When I got to the Museum in Golden Gate Park at 5am that Monday morning, we began unloading at 8, by 10 had everything off, and not one speck of sugar found on the floor of the truck.

 

Great team of installers. Had the carriage together by the end of day 1. Back at the hotel and asleep by 5pm. Chandelier, days 2 and 3: a bit more complicated as it had never been completely together, and therefore needed tweaking here and there. But as I was attaching the final drops, a visitor to the museum, asked over the barrier, was it made of amber. She said she’d grown up in Siberia where chandeliers made of amber were hung in palaces. Long Live Catherine the Great. I wanted to give her a prize.

   

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The 3rd piece in glass and metal seemed like a flea by comparison to install, and took all of 10 minutes.

 

  

               

(above, background to foreground) Timothy Horn, Diadem (light heavyweight), Mother Load, Sweet Thing.

 

Press walk thru on the Thursday. Beatrice from the NGA, who is doing a stint at the Oz Embassy in Washington flew on over. Got a good rap from the Bay Area Press, San Francisco Mag put “Bitter Suite” on their “it” list. But what could top the NY Times! Love that photo, in my funny old studio with fake carpet linoleum.

 

Opening was good. Jamie (from glass) and Sebastian (from sculpture) who live in San Francisco came, with their 18 month old Oberon. Massive Chilhuly extravaganza downstairs will insure a steady stream of visitors to the Museum over the summer. They were expecting 20,000 the opening weekend, Saturday alone saw 15,000.

 

                                (click to enlarge)  

 

 

Art, who’d flown out for the opening, marched me round his old stomping grounds of Noe Valley, along skanky old Polk Street, down through Chinatown to Fisherman’s Wharf past the seals and tourist stalls selling Alcatraz souvenirs, along the marina, then back up Pacific Heights to Golden gate Park. On the Sunday, despite the fog, took the tram out to Ocean Beach and walked along the Pacific, finding large swags of seaweed and sand dollar shells, staring out at that body water that separates this continent from yours. Had some fabulous dinners out, though the current trend in dining seems to be for large cavernous spaces that, TV monitors and everyone shouting to be heard – is it just me, the bumpkin from out in the sticks, who comes to the big smoke and can’t cope… anyway, were searching around for a restaurant on Saturday night, when Art remembered Rue Lepic, on Nob Hill, where he first stayed when he lived in SF many years ago: homestyle french cuisine made by a Japanese woman, who’d married a Frenchman back in the 60’s, whose mother had taught her to cook. Hanging in the restaurant is a fabulous portrait of her, painted in the 80’s, wrapped in a white fur coat, looking like a Japanese Catherine Deneuve. At 68, and only cooking 3 days a week, she was able to come and sit with us, flirt like mad, and share stories, like the fortune teller who’d convinced her not to sell after the ‘89 earthquake.

 

Also have a piece in a show that recently opened at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe called FLUX. A top of the pop, A to Z of American glass show, that also features some refreshing works by Kirstie Rea and Jess O’Loughlin. The best piece in my mind however is an extraordinarily tailored woman’s fur coat, made of clear stringers of lampworked glass, ingeniously and meticulously wrought, and suspended from a concealed rack, by Minako Shirakura.

 

                            

 

 

 

[Thanks Timmy, that was as good as a holiday!!    n(Ed)]

Related articles: http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2008/06/16/35060.html 

                             San Franscisco Bay Guardian review

                            

For the aforementioned Flux exhibition in Santa Fe, go to…

http://www.mfasantafe.org/display.php?menu=view_exhib&ex_id=68&ex_state=exhib_current

 

…and don’t be too alarmed to find that our Tim is labelled a New Mexican artist. That happens in the States. We once found ourselves, to our utter bemusement, having to argue the toss with the bods in a prominent gallery in Seattle who insisted that James Minson was American – they refused, point blank, to believe he was an Aussie. Go figure. It’s a mark of success we guess. 

 

Meanwhile, prompted by Tim, we checked out Minako Shirakura – no coat, but plenty to see at http://www.minakoshirakura.com/