Timothy Ely
Timothy Ely | |
|---|---|
| Born | Timothy C. Ely 1949 (age 76–77) Snohomish, Washington |
| Known for | Painter, Graphic Designer, Bookbinder. |
| Awards | National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Art Matters, Inc. Grant |
Timothy C. Ely (born February 9, 1949) is a contemporary American painter, graphic artist, and bookbinder, known for creating single-copy handmade books as art objects.
Ely was born in Snohomish, Washington in 1949.[1] Following graduate school (University of Washington, MFA 1975), Ely undertook a self-directed study of bookbinding and began to create his first work.[2][3]
With a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1981) Ely traveled to Japan and England to study bookbinding and paper making.[3] He eventually moved his studio to Portland, Oregon, back to his native Pacific Northwest.[1] His works are highly valued and feature in public and private collections, including those at Princeton, Yale, and University of Texas, Austin.[4]
Ely has also collaborated with the writers David Abel (Memo 7 and Other Works, 1989) and Terence McKenna (Synesthesia, 1992), who also wrote the introduction to the 1995 trade publication of Ely's 1985 book Flight Into Egypt.[5][better source needed] Ely has also illustrated a small number of conventional or commercial projects. He currently lives in Colfax, Washington.[6][7]
Style
[edit]Yale art historian Johanna Drucker discusses Ely's work in her chapter titled "The Book as a Rare and/or Auratic Object" where she observes Ely's works "suggest a world in which the book is an artifact of wisdom,… secret and precious, available to the initiate rather than the casual or widespread reader".[8]
Much of Ely’s work is annotated with his own glyphs he calls “cribriform.” [9][8] In an interview with Pamela Train Leutz, Ely said he was "intrigued with the idea of concealment" after learning how to hide doodles from his elementary school teacher.[7]
Roy Harley Lewis described Ely as a bookbinder in the "total book" tradition, constructing not only the paper and the binding of the book but the art that it contains.[3] Ely's books serve as a "looking-at machine" for his fantastical drawings,[3] and they frequently feature maps and diagrams that invite the reader to investigate hidden meaning.[10]
Ely has developed a distinctive method that he calls "Drumleaf binding", which allows his drawing to extend into the gutter without being damaged.[11]
Selected Works
[edit] |
- Heliotropy (1983, Smith College)
- Countercode Archeo-logic (1984, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas)
- Triad (1985, Temple University)
- Optical Aleutians 4 (1986, National Art Library, Victoria & Albert Museum)
- Elementals (1989, Yale University)
- Totem (1989, Library of Congress)
- Sense 9 (1990, Florida Atlantic University)
- Doppler Gossip (1991, Brooklyn Museum)
- Alpha Deep (1991, Princeton University)
- Saturnia (1994, Lilly Library)
- Arka (1995, University of Utah)
- Pelidnota (1995, Stanford University)
- Gamma Cruxis (1997, Columbia University)
- Tables of Mercury (2000, Multnomah County Library)
- Time Stunt: Spore (2001 Boston Athenaeum)
- Compound 12 (2005, University of Denver)
- Halo Chalice (2005, Lilly Library)
- Trajections (2006, Reed College)
- Formation (2008, University of Idaho)
- Index (2009, Lilly Library)
- Interference (2012, Bradley University)
- Polarity (2013, Lilly Library)
References
[edit]- 1 2 Ely, Timothy C. (2018). "A Planetary Collage Blog, About".
- ↑ Ely, Timothy C. (2018). "A Planetary Collage Blog, Artists Journey, Part 1".
- 1 2 3 4 Lewis, Roy Harley (1985). Fine Bookbinding in the Twentieth Century. New York, NY: Arco Publishing Inc. pp. 11, 65, 69, 102, 103, 120. ISBN 0-668-06084-0.
- ↑ "The Vanishing Library: Timothy Ely's Odd Little Book from Outer Space". 2026-06-09. Retrieved 2026-10-26.
- ↑ Ely, Timothy C. (1995). The Flight into Egypt: binding the book. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. ISBN 0-8118-0620-0.
- ↑ Masters. Book arts : major works by leading artists. Wallace, Eileen (Book artist), Hale, Julie ([First edition] ed.). New York. 2011. ISBN 9781600594977. OCLC 645889535.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link) - 1 2 Leutz, Pamela Train (2010). The Thread That Binds: Interviews with Private Practice Bookbinders. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press. pp. 39–50. ISBN 978-1-58456-274-0.
- 1 2 Johanna Drucker (1994). The Century of Artists' Books. New York, NY: Granary Books. pp. 94–94. ISBN 978-1-887123-69-3.
- ↑ gonzagau (2010-09-08), Tim Ely, archived from the original on 2021-12-21, retrieved 2016-02-29
- ↑ Hubert, Renée Riese; Hubert, Judd D. (1999). The Cutting Edge of Reading: Artists’ Books. Granary Books. pp. 231–239. ISBN 9781887123211.
- ↑ Melissa Jay Craig (2007). "The Drumleaf Binding" (PDF). The Guild of BookWorkers’ Journal. XLI (2).
- Ely, Timothy C. Flight Into Egypt. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1995.
- Hale, Julie and Beth Sweet (eds.). Masters: Book Arts: Major Works by Leading Artists. New York, Lark Crafts, 2011.
- The Bonefolder: an e-journal for the bookbinder and book artist. Vol. 1, No. 1, 2004.
- Hubert, Renée Riese, and Judd D. Hubert. The Cutting Edge of Reading: Artists' Books. New York, Granary Books, 1999.
External links
[edit]- Timothy C. Ely Blog
- Line of Sight, a short documentary interview with Timothy Ely.
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