Tiernan Alexander and Tim Eads in their shared studio
I stopped by Tiernan and Tim’s space at Art Making Machine Studios recently to ask them a few questions. They shared some details about current projects they have underway and also a bit about their experience working on their collaborative show last year at Grizzly Grizzly, Husband vs. Wife.
ANNA What brought you to Philly?
TIERNAN We’re both from Texas, when we met we were both really into ceramics. In fact we met in a clay class. I decided to spend a year in Mexico studying ceramics and Spanish. Tim came to join me. Later, when we were in Dallas we decided to apply to grad school. I got into University of the Arts here in Philly and Tim got into Cranbrook. The perfect thing was that UArts was low residency so we spent the summers here and the rest of the year in Detroit for a couple of years. After a couple of summers here we knew this was where we wanted to move.
TIM Because it’s not Dallas and it’s not Detroit. And it’s not expensive. Because of the Cranbrook connection people starting coming out of the woodwork. It really helped in the beginning.
TIERNAN Tim got this awesome job. I was in my last summer of grad school. He had just finished and was in Detriot by himself. We collect stuff like no other people on earth so we had two giant trucks full of our garbage. He and a friend left Detroit with all our belongings before we had signed a lease here. I didn’t have a studio during the last semester of grad school so I had to put on my degree show from my South Philly house.
Working Woman-Foot, Tiernan Alexander
ANNA Do you think working in your living room affected the type of work you were doing?
TIERNAN It was very domestic. It gave me the excuse to do what I wanted to do. I was becoming obsessed with these shrunken heads and these embroidered hair foot stools. I just wanted to make this domestic work that wouldn’t require a studio anyway. If I were paying for a studio I would think, “I must be making work out of clay.” If I had been dying to make my entire thesis show out of clay I would’ve found a way.
ANNA So the lack of studio space gave you more freedom?
TIERNAN Definitely. It gave me permission. One of the things I was trying to learn in grad school was first of all there’s this incredible plaque buildup. There were layers and layers of plaque build up about what I thought art is. They just accumulated over my life without me realizing it. Things that had come into my head over a lifetime of looking, thinking and reading about art. You don’t realize that they are there, shaping you and forcing your hand in the studio. The choices I made were shaped more by assumptions than by my own actual desire and intent. I spent more of grad school trying to strip away my layers of plaque.
TIM It drove me insane. Cranbrook was a lot more like a residency. It was two years of doing exactly what I wanted to do. And then going to having no studio in a city I didn’t know. I started my Kickstarter project because I had all this time. I started to do little models. Around that time Fluxspace wanted to do as studio visit. I had to set everything up in my house.
TIERNAN He built a full on installation in the stairwell. This is a South Philly row house with tubes and wires going up the stairs, into the master bedroom and the office.
3,178 minus 366, Tim Eads
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