In 1999, Tim came to New York from Florida to attend The Cooper Union. While there and abroad at The Slade School of Art in London, Tim learned to operate the vintage machine tools scattered around the sculpture shops, and began what would become a lifelong relationship with machinist techniques. After college, he cut his teeth restoring antique light fixtures, and fabricating elaborate installation pieces for his friend and mentor Lorenzo Clayton.

In 2006 Tim became the designer for Gramercy Tools, a brand specializing in the manufacture of fine hand tools for woodworkers. Tim holds the position to this day, and many of the tools he has designed and manufactured are still on the market and distributed worldwide.

Studio practice and workshop life are central to Tim’s thinking, and he draws a connection between his art and design careers through the careful consideration of tools and facilities. Conceptually, tool design requires a form of meta-practice, one layer removed from the primary action of the tool and user. Tim’s studio is therefore not merely a venue for work, but functions as an observatory for contemplating these activities.

In late 2015 Tim was forced to vacate, along with nearly 100 other artists in adjoining spaces, his studio of 13 years. It was dusty firetrap underneath a train trestle next to a heavily polluted canal, but the loss of his beloved studio was a severe blow. Several hundred pounds of tools were heaped into a storage space while Tim searched for a new atelier.

During the transition and with a cache of fancy paper unearthed in the move, Tim rekindled his love of drawing over his home drafting table. This period coincided with design work on a new handsaw. In order to produce an ornamental texture for the saw blade, Tim found himself drawing and redrawing shagreen and rayskin patterns. By the time Tim moved into a new studio in 2016, he had completed several works in a new an ongoing body of work. Principally drawings in ink and gouache, he refers to this work collectively as the Shagreen Series.

In 2017 Tim reunited with Lorenzo to present “Preparations for the Divine: Sketching Practice as Moving Meditation” at a symposium organized by the Morgan Drawing Institute in collaboration with The Drawing Center. Tim’s talk drew connections between elements of Old Master sketches and his current ideation process as a designer. These connections formed a lens for interpreting the mind-state of the Old Masters. Preparation for this talk involved firsthand examination of sketches by Piranesi and Da Vinci, which Tim still can’t believe they let him do.

Tim believes that drawing is the foundation of design, and that people who need help making things deserve someone kind to ask. He maintains his new studio in service to this philosophy. Tim lives in Red Hook with his wife and daughter.