A chair is like a quilt, and a quilt is like memory.
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It’s fitting to begin talking about Brendan Timmins’ work with the language of clothing and textiles. An artist, a stylist, a furniture maker, a curator of textures and shapes, his creative process is just as similar to the act of getting dressed as it is to traditional furniture making.
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For Semi-Domesticated, Timmins’ second solo show, a single form–the corner chair–becomes a kind of template on which to explore iteration and combination. Seats and beams, like shirts and shoes assembled into an outfit, are rotated, repeated, cut and broken until an idea emerges in a single moment of cohesion–moments in which an experiment becomes a decision. Each chair an individual, each individual a member of a family.
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A quilt is quite a fitting reference and mirror here–a simple constraint that has infinite possibilities. Timmins’ furniture, like the folk tradition of quilting, looks backward to look forward, with a sense of self-acknowledgement that exists through building upon an idea. “A history of what I love”, as he describes it. Rather than leaving behind the body of work that existed before this one, Semi-Domesticated loops back upon this history, bouncing and remixing it into something familiar and new.
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An integral part of folk art is reflected here in this collection–the inherent elegance of what materials are frequently present in a particular region. Through the sincere use of available supplies, beauty and
interest are born not through a sort of hammer-over-the-head display of monetary value, but through a painterly imagination. What is handmade furniture? What is accessible handmade furniture? This approach to common-ness infuses the work here with a level of refreshing universality in the face of an ever-shifting world of shock and awe–a modern approach to an ageless process.
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Call it furniture, or craft or material experimentation, or maybe something altogether more, Semi-Domesticated isn’t particularly about design in its most limited definition. It asks questions rather than responds to them– questions about Timmins’ body of work, about what is ‘of the people’, about his own identity as a maker. Semi-Domesticated is about style and a love for style, and what we might find within ourselves when we let go of our own definitions and give in to the unity of exploration and gut reaction.