Studio Visit with Tim Robertson
Timothy Robertson runs one of the only risograph presses in Louisville and is a master of experimenting with laborious print procceses. We talk about risographs, his work, and the importance of seeing evidence of the process.
Who are you?
My name's Tim Robertson. I'm about to turn 44, I'm a dad. I have three sons, they're gonna be taller than me. I'm not from Louisville, but I've lived here for almost 10 years. I'm originally from the Washington, DC area. I’ve spent a pretty significant portion of my life living overseas. My wife is a social worker so we lived in Cambodia and she taught counselors and other social workers. So, she's awesome.
First song you’re playing on aux?
Oh, this is an old one. I’m putting on Blonde on Blonde by Nada Surf.
What do you do?
I make photographs and I like to work with experimental print processes and other process heavy work. Important parts of my art practice are experimentation, play, and collaboration. I love working on stuff with other artists. So that's why I like risograph work, it's really democratic. I can work with kids or I can work with someone who has been making stuff for a long time and help them translate their work into something new. That's an exciting part of the practice for me.
How did you get into photography?
When I was 14, my great uncle mailed me this really big box and inside was his old Olympus SLR with a whole bunch of lenses. I just started snapping pictures with it and that was it. I was like, “Oh wait, I can make images of what I see.” And that was really amazing to me. Everyone has their own way of seeing and it's really rare to find a way that makes sense for you to share it, you know? For me, photography was how I could share what I saw and it just felt like magic.
It started when I was living overseas in Cambodia where it wasn’t easy to get photographs printed perfectly. It was difficult to even get your film processed and when you did there were all kinds of color shifts and so I had to let go of trying to get a perfect exposure. Once I let go of that I realized, “Wait, I can print this in all kinds of different ways.” You know, ink transfers and things like that. That wasn’t very straightforward either because of the materials there, I just had to make my own materials. It was an adventure and got me out into the city and countryside looking for materials and talking to people and suddenly process became a really important part of my practice. This long laborious hunt was really exciting to me, and zoning out and just doing the work by hand is really good for me mentally. I love to look at artworks and see the evidence of the process, to see the little slip up or the mistake or the accident that turns out to make the piece more unique and interesting. I think that I used to go out looking for a really perfect photograph, but then when I made that shift, I was really just using the photography as material either to create a certain piece or even just to inform that piece.
When you can let go of being precious with your shots it really frees you up.
Tim’s risograph machine.
You run Risolution Press and are one of the only people that still does risograph printing in Louisville, tell me about how that works.
The best way to describe risograph printing is almost like screen printing through a machine. It's a stencil based duplicator, so you print one color at a time. The feel of a risograph is almost like a lithograph in that some of the texture comes through but it's not as heavy as a screen print, if that makes sense. And it's unpredictable, there's a lot of quirkiness and again, you have to not be precious about your work. I got it because I saw some risograph prints of photographs, like some monotone reds and blues, and I had some work that I wanted to use in that way. I went looking around Louisville for a risograph printer and I couldn't find anything, this was like 2017. I bought a used machine from Hallagans up in Chicago so that I could make stuff for myself and I really quickly realized, “Oh, this is fun.” And it was a process I wanted to share with other artists. There's so many types of art that can be translated through it. I started working with other artists who came looking for me because they also couldn't find a risograph printer in town. It helps keep my art practice a little bit sustainable 'cause I have to feed my kids. [Laughs]
I like to run trails in the woods, I like to take my dog and go for long runs. I play soccer with my boys and board games and a lot of other unplugged stuff.
Friend that inspires you?
My bud Michael Winters. He has this ability to slow down and really look and see what's going on around him, or just be still and observe something. I have so much trouble slowing my brain down but he inspires me to try. He’s an arts director at the Sojourn Gallery and a photographer and art maker. What he really does is encourages artists to keep going. He finds young artists and old artists and everything in between. People run into him and he'll say something to them and they'll be like, “Okay, I'm gonna keep making art.” He’s very singularly gifted in that way. If you're ever feeling like you're gonna stop making stuff, go have a conversation with Michael Winters over coffee and you'll change your mind.
Who was the first artist you saw that made you think, “Wow, I want to do something like that.”
I remember seeing work from a lot of older artists, I mostly encountered artists through books and museums and stuff. Saul Leiter’s photographs were very informative to me as a young photographer and Robert Rauschenberg and that kind of stuff from the 50s and 60s. In my early art practicing years, there was this guy named Loven Ramos. He's from the Philippines, but I met him in Cambodia, which is where I lived at the time. He's the artist that encouraged me to show my work for the first time. He owned an art hotel and commissioned work from me for the first time. He’s one of those people that act as batteries for our younger artists. You know, telling you to just do it when there's no voices telling you that.
If I have a project that I'm working on, usually I assess what needs to get done to move forward that day. It’s often a physical process of some kind. If not, I like to play with stuff. I pull images from my archive and I have lists of materials that I want to experiment with. I make test prints on the risograph all the time. That's my main thing, what am I gonna experiment on today? And most of that doesn't work out well, you know, I make a lot of trash. But, every once in a while there's a piece of trash that I like and I learn something. That’s what I do mostly, play and experiment.
What do you think is the importance of still making physical stuff when everything is increasingly becoming more digital?
I think being in the presence of a piece of artwork is a different experience and I like seeing the process. Even if it’s a fine art photograph, you're looking at the frame that it's been put in and you're looking at the material it's printed on. It just talks to you differently in real life than it does through the digital world. There's meaning in making physical pieces of work because most of the artwork now lives in a digital world. I feel like the stuff that doesn’t is a treasure, it’s a thing that's in an exact place at an exact time and that makes it special.
Two of Tim’s works hanging in his studio space.
What do you do for a day job?
I work with Misc Goods Co. and it's a great day job to have. It's a very creative company and we design all kinds of things. The main part of our line is our fragrances. We have four natural fragrances that we designed. Stuff you wear, like deodorant and cologne, and then we have incense, we make some really good incense and other home fragrance stuff. My part is that I do a lot of special projects, I'll work with other brands and help them make something custom or make something completely new. I enjoy that process a lot. It's always kind of an adventure. It's not as secure as working for a really big company, so there's a little bit of adrenaline. I do a lot of research, like design research when we're making some new products. I really enjoy looking into how people make things and learning about how that happens and trying it myself. Recently I learned how to make soap, I just followed the recipe and I’ve been making it and trying to see if it works in a mold. I love experimentation.
What does success mean to you?
I think that if I'm successful, after another person's interaction with me or whatever I made then they’ll walk away having benefited somehow. Whether it's that I made something that makes them ask a question they've never asked before or I make something and there's like this one little corner that's kind of weird looking and it's just really cool to them or that they have a conversation with me and decide like, yeah, I'm gonna keep making stuff. I think that to be generative is to be successful.
What makes Louisville special?
Louisville just has this thing about it and I don't know how to describe it. Like, when I meet new artists or I go to a show or I watch bands here play, it doesn't ever feel like people are sizing each other up. It's more that they're just celebrating each other. No place is perfect, but there is a genuine spirit of Louisville artists celebrating other Louisville artists and I love that. I love the young energy of the arts community in recent years. I hope that young artists feel that there's space for them and that we want their voice.
What’s next for you? I know you have a show coming up.
Yeah, so myself and five other artists are doing a group show. It's about wilderness, mostly specifically focused on Red River Gorge. We all went on a backpacking trip for three days there. We had read some of Wendell Berry’s stuff and some other things just to kind of get us thinking about wilderness. Like, what does that mean in today's world? We've been making work for it for a year. We're gonna show it at Mellwood Art Center in August. My pieces are trying to hint at this idea of the ancient nature of the landscape and the sporadic human interaction. Like, even if someone goes and lives in the woods for their entire life, it's this tiny little blip. Everything they do there is just like a flash and it's gone and the timeframe of the landscape is just so much different than ours. I try to reflect that a little bit in some of the images that I'm making. And everyone's got different takes and different ideas about wilderness so it should be cool. The other artists involved are just really good. I'm excited and a little intimidated. But mostly excited to see everyone’s work together.
Walk me through the process you’re using for these new pieces.
I start with a photograph that I took and I separate that photograph into the CMYK print layers. Then with a really high quality inkjet I print each layer separately and then I transfer each layer one at a time. So starting with yellow, I transfer it onto a wooden surface that I've coated with silver leaf. I transfer the prints face down with acrylic and then I take all the paper away. I build up more layers and then I do the next color. Usually I start with yellow, and then I go to magenta, and then I go into cyan, then last is black. That's the shadows, it kind of defines everything when you get the black layer on. Because of the silver leaf on the bottom the luminance shines through. When they're done you can see the light shining through each of the layers and it leaves more evidence of the process that way.
Tim in the basement of his home working on the pieces for his upcoming show.
What keeps you going and wanting to make stuff?
It's like I'm more healthy when I'm making things. It's just part of me I guess. I have to be making things, even if I'm not showing stuff. Someone once told me about this idea of a giant lake that’s made up of all of the things that people make. This giant lake of creative things, like creative output, and every generation of humans needs to put their bit in there just to keep the lake full. Not everything that's made is gonna be some masterpiece that's remembered through the generations, but it's still a piece of what we're making as humanity. Some of the good things that are coming out of us. Just being part of that is great, and exhilarating.
@timothyirobertson
timothyirobertson.com
Louisville, KY
Photography & Interview by Isaac Barnett
@iebcam