About
Tim Graveson
Tim Graveson was born in San Francisco raised in Inverness California. Both parents were artists many of their friends were also artists and writers. Phillip K Dick was a family friend Gordon Onslow Ford a surrealist painter and many others. My father had a deep background in photography and gave me my first box camera when I was six years old I have been taking photographs ever since.
Education
AA Fine Art Collage of Marin, Dean's List
BA Fine Art Sonoma State University, Dean's List
Select Shows
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1983-2023 GRO Shows Gallery, Point Reyes Station,Ca.
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2019 Orangeland Gallery
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2014 Novato, CA, Marin Community Foundation “Transitions”, Photographs
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2011 Arts, Ecology and Consciousness, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma
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2008 Orange County Center for the Arts, On Of and About Paper
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2008 Yukon Territory, Whitehorse, Canada “Sublimation” photographs
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2008 Northern Ireland, Armagh, Two Person Show at the Market Place Theater Gallery
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2007 Worked Books, Two person show at Gallery Route One
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2005 California Currents Group Show, Falkirk Cultural Center
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2004 Belfast, Northern Ireland “Hand Held”, Paragon Studio
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1995 Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA part of exhibition “What is Art for” mixed media, video
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1985 San Francisco, Two person show SOMA gallery, Two Non-Objective painters
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1985-2015 Point Reyes Station, West Marin County, CA, Ongoing represented by GRO, and Some Times Book Gallery.
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1984 Became a founding member of Gallery Route One, a non-profit
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1978 Starts showing paintings, photographs, mixed media and film in the San Francisco bay area
Publications/Presentations
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2014 Photograph in San Chronicle pink section
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2004 Preview ArtWeek, February, pg. 27
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1978 San Francisco Examiner, “Artist year in a Tree”
Professional Development
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1975 University Of California Berkeley Takes advanced photograph seminar class with Ellen Brocks
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1974 Worked in the studio of Photographer Art Rodgers
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1973- 1984 Worked as Studio assistant for painter Gordon Oslo Ford surrealist painter
Artist Statement
Thirty years ago I started making images of books placed in environments for a collaborative installation called “The Last Library.” At the time several forces seemed to threaten books, not just a single book, but whole libraries and collections of books. The Internet was just taking off and the idea was to digitize books to make them available over a network or online. Libraries were tossing out their card catalogues; people feared that in the near future physical books would be completely replaced by the digital e-book.
I consider my work conceptual photography with a performance aspect. For several years I have been placing books in certain environments and then photographing them. Often the environment is “natural.” The session begins when I place a book in a specific location: in the forest, on a beach, beside or in a freshwater creek or waterfall. The process also transforms the books: I often submerge them in water, or allow wind and weather to alter the pages; I have even burned books in a consciously staged alchemical process. I also work in urban environments: cityscapes, certain rooms; but always the books are displaced from their normal setting.
I consider the book a symbol of human knowledge: a container that is greater than any single individual book. The book — as a symbolic object — transcends whatever text it contains. It has the power to transform the landscape or cityscape in which I have placed it. By placing the book in a landscape there is reference to the human-made in juxtaposition to nature. People bring their own stories to my images of books in their various settings.
Most of the books in my photographs are from an dicards and or form my family book collection set too out-of-date to be useful, too recent to be an antique. These volumes would just end up in landfill. Other books are already damaged. I keep and reuse most of the books many times. You could say I’ve given them a new life as images.
No knowledge or information was lost in the making of these images.
Tim Graveson