Weird Projects
Art is a way of life for Tim. Therefor it's hard to categorize much of the results.
Here are a number of art projects that bounce between visual art, performance and social engineering.
BlueBills; money for a clean world
The financial crisis continues to unfold around the world as Trump’s tariffs roil economies everywhere. The U.S. economy is a capitalist system where the economy benefits the rich at the expense of the majority. The Trump administration, big banks and other super-rich players are able to control pension plans, retirement accounts, homes and savings belonging to we, the people, all with near total impunity. In the face of such enormous global forces what one person can do to declare their autonomy?
One day a little old lady in our neighborhood showed us how, with a very simple process: by dying her money blue. That alone is one act that could transform our whole economy to protect people and nature from exploitation.
The Montana Logging and Ballet Co.
The Montana Logging and Ballet Company (MLBC) is an American music and political satire quartet, the longest-running one in the nation, having performed around the U.S. from 1975. Their official retirement from touring was in 2013 and they re-retired after their last public performance in 2021. They continue to publish online and even perform occasionally, but mostly in the shower.
The MLBC consists of four guys that love to play music and poke fun at the powerful in improvised performances. They've performed for over 1,000 audiences, from the U.S. Congress to the National Press Club to the Whitehall, MT public library, most often for churches, women's groups and progressive nonprofit fundraisers. Known for their “infectious silliness”, they appeared as NPR's "resident political satirists for a few years and have performed with Arlo Guthrie, Garisson Keillor and other celebrities.
Random Gifts of Art
Two friends came together to solve each other’s problems. Garret Garrels’s boredom with traveling the world as a speaker was transformed when Tim Holmes presented him with original drawings to hand out as gifts to strangers. For Garret it absolutely transformed the way he travels! Now, on the road he’s always looking for the next recipient…
The project then unfolded into:
• a limited book, given to be passed along after reading
• a comedy show about generosity and reaching out to strangers that toured Europe
• A TED talk about the project
• A TV mini-series formatted as a rehearsal for a show
• Hundreds of drawings gifted to strangers around the world
• A collection of stories by the recipients of the gifts
Click here for details about the project
Speed Paintings
In conjunction with Merlin CCC, a community philosophy organization, Tim did a number of speed paintings and drawings for live performance fundraisers.
Model-Artist Alchemy
a relationship lab
Model-Artist Alchemy is a unique figure drawing technique that I’ve been developing over some 35 years.
While traditional figure drawing essentially treats the model as little more than an endlessly shape-shifting object, in Artist’s Alchemy the model and artist encounter each other as a living psychic entity. who serves as a projection screen to receive their unconscious material, much like a psychotherapist does.
The technique generates powerful images through a creative interaction with the model as “the other”, a symbol for the partner in any relationship. The artist not only draws a visual scene, but a dynamic person, exposing her own charged relationship, as she essentially "sees" in the model some aspect of her own soul otherwise invisible, which makes the model luminous with energy.