Untitled #01

For the project, Timothy Washington aimed to make the glasses as authentic and natural as possible. Wood, being one of the Earth’s most natural resources, felt like the ideal material to achieve this authenticity. Blue, a colour Washington frequently uses in his work, has always symbolized peace and spirituality for him.

Timothy Washington was raised in the predominantly Black communities of South Los Angeles. As a child, he and his brothers would climb the nearby Watts Towers, an early, lasting influence that sparked his interest in architectural, visual, and formal investigation. His grandfather, a master carpenter, was another major influence in his life. In 1969 he received a BFA from the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. Washington is a prominent figure of the Black Arts Movement, the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power Movement. Washington has been a pioneer of socio-politically charged work ever since. He has exhibited widely in solo exhibitions, and his work is held in numerous permanent museum collections.

Washington is known for creating assemblages that incorporate drawing, painting, and sculpture. His sculptures embed myriad objects found in his neighbourhood or collected through family and friends, including hair, jewellery, urban debris, plastic toys, street signs, and ceramic shards. For Washington, these disparate materials are not just formal choices, but expressions of a broader philosophy he calls “space consciousness”, suggesting that all objects and histories can be a mystic's tools for seeing beyond our earthly experience and our human tendency towards distinction.