Tim Holmes, artist-philosopher

Tim Holmes is the first American artist ever invited to exhibit solo at the world's largest art museum, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, where his sculptures remain on permanent exhibit. He has created sculpture for some of the world's peacemaking organizations from the United Nations to the Chinese dissident students of Tiananmen Square. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, President Jimmy Carter, President Vaclav Havel, and Coretta Scott King are among Holmes' best-known collectors.

Though Holmes is known for his sculpture internationally, he sometimes works in other media and often uses his art outside of the art world. His award-winning series of short films, called the Body Psalms project, reflects his fascination with the sacred body with films illuminated with scriptures frm various religions in a kind of sculptural poetry. These films question the inevitable devaluation of the body in capitalist culture and have appeared at special screenings– frequently in educational settings– in the US and Europe. 

Holmes's work primarily focuses on the struggle for freedom, horror at inner and outer evils, the ferocity of hopelessness and the tenderness of love.  He began sculpting in welded metal at age 11. He believes that art is the medicine that will help heal the world.

I believe that art can transform us in ways impossible through any other human activity.

Works of art are the footprints into the journey of aliveness in an endlessly stimulating world. The exclusively human gift of creativity makes us indeed God’s junior partners in the co-creation of a yet unfinished Universe.

Art has the magical capacity to make us aware of both the outer and inner worlds simultaneously, often so puzzling because while it can sometimes make no sense to our minds, it can feel so right to our souls; helping remind us that reason is too flimsy a tool to access the mystery. Art moves us on a level beneath comprehension.

In my work I attempt to access– through the metaphors of outer forms– the inner material beneath politics and personality that imbues everyday life with passionate richness. On that level we are all family, a truth of which the outer life leaves us forgetful, but of which art always reminds us. In the presence of a good work of art we experience a strange alchemy that can transform the confusing and painful into the beautiful and meaningful, reminding our souls through a silent, intimate exchange, that we are not– after all– alone.

I've always used many media and have focused recdently on film as a means of addressing what I see as a critical problem facing the world on the scale of global warming but that remains largely invisible: the devaluation of the body by global capitalism.

I want to take ART out of the gallery, where it has become safely commodified and often defused by the commercial world, and bring it back to the front lines of people's lives, where it can affect real transformation.  I no longer even see myself as an artists, but more of a "cultural visionary", a person dedicated to seeing the truth and trying to help us all imagine our way into a joyful future.