Travel Treasures ... Across America
"Travel Treasures ... Across America" features conversations with people whose work enriches big towns and small. They are artists, historians, restaurants, entrepreneurs and more. Their work enriches daily life for locals and visitors. They are passionate about their work, eloquent about the importance of contributing to the public good and thoughtful about their own journeys to a life of creativity.
Travel Treasures ... Across America
TIM ADAMS: “The Perspective of an Artist”
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TIM ADAMS
“The Perspective of an Artist”
Tim Adams grew up in difficult economic times in Iowa. There was an early love of art and a desire, a need to create public art. He says his years at Iowa State gave him “the perspective of an artist and not just a day laborer.” It took decades, many decades before he could realize the dream of working on public art full time. And art lovers, primarily in Iowa, the Midwest and the Plains States, are the beneficiaries.
All over the state and the Midwest and the plain states. You've had a lot of pieces shown publicly for many years, and you have a lot of pieces shown right now. So, what's the day-to-day like for you in terms of how busy you are?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so my business model is like this. I have always wanted to be to do this public art, but I had to spend basically the first 55 years of my life doing other stuff. And so when I owned a nursery and garden center, and when I closed that right around COVID time, I still had all the property and all the equipment and so on and so forth. And I'm one of those people that I have to get up and do something every day. I just I have a difficult time. And I've said this before to people that being an artist isn't something you choose to do, it's something you have to do. Like if I get up in the day and in the morning and I don't come out here and work and do a certain amount of you know production, I really feel like I'm failing. And so my average day is uh I'm supposed to be semi-retired, but I don't ever want to retire because I love what I'm doing. But I get up in the morning, um hang around with my dog for probably an hour, and then I'll come out here nine, ten o'clock, which it's only like five minutes from my house, and usually the night before I'll have a list of everything I want to do, but then I will usually have two or three projects going on at a time. And I do a lot of plasma cutting, so I'll make parts in advance and then you know use those. But oftentimes I don't have my entire design figured out until I see parts of it going up. So um I'll always have you know three projects going on that I have to do, and then I'll have one off to the side that's something I want to do. And so the piece I want to do is the juice after I get done with the stuff other people want me to do.
SPEAKER_00You hold that piece, the piece you want to do, you hold that out. It's like kind of like the carrot. Um I'll do this work, and I get done with this work, like the deal that you make with yourself.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Because otherwise, I'd never do it, you know. Like it's easy to become complacent, but over the years I've assembled a pretty decent amount of like materials that, like, oh yeah, someday I'm gonna do this, someday I'm gonna do that. Well, at least I'm gonna incorporate this material with that material. And I'm trying to be as unique as I can and not like copy other styles or other people. It's difficult, but I like to try different, you know. If you look at my website, I'm all over the board. You know, I don't have any one thing that's like, oh, I love these, I love those, you know. So I haven't really settled on a certain design style. And I feel like at some point I probably should start doing that. But I haven't I've experimented and I haven't found like the exact combination. I just want to do that, you know.
SPEAKER_00Well, if if the doing the different types of things is what makes you happy, then there are no shoulds.
SPEAKER_02Right. And I uh the technology is such now that it's really changed the way I do my art because I have a CNC uh router behind me that I use to make a lot of more detailed parts, and I also have a uh metal plasma table next door that I cut a lot of my seal parts with. And so those two things, you know, I can't like hold a plasma torch like the way I used to do, you know, I can't cut pieces so the CNC machines make my work a lot easier, it's less physical, and that's been nice, um, which is nice. And a lot of the proposals I end up doing, you know, I'll get a call like from a some organization, and they'll describe kind of what they're thinking about, and I'll rack my brain for two or three days and sketch things out and do this or that or whatever, and then I'll get back to them. And last, I don't know, it's been a while back. I by chance went to a seminar and they were talking about artificial intelligence in architecture, and how that's impacting just the entire design field. And one of the things that we talked about was I would always make a model or hand-drawn sketch so they know it wasn't AI. But I could have gone on there and taken the project statement that the organization gave and and more or less copy and paste that into my uh, you know, any one of a number of AI form, uh, what do we call it platforms, and it will crank out a way better design than my brain could ever put together. You know, I and I'm like, wow, that's really gonna impact the way you know we do art in the future. Like now it's always been you take that input from your client and you incorporate that into a design with methods and products that you've used in the past. But now a savvy person can go online, you know, and generate a proposal in literally figuratively and literally 15 minutes. Where I hopefully spend days with my staff to like write and think and product, you know. So we're really at a difficult spot where our business we want it to be, you know, that I have four other people that work with me. And to be able to communicate with them and the input we have in our design, you know, we have a design meeting once a week.
SPEAKER_00Hopefully, there'll always be a place for the human touch and the the human idea. Is there an early time growing up when you realized this notion of wow, I'm this notion of art, of creating art or just looking at it, this is really special, and this is something I'm really passionate about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You know, I always liked designing things and sketching and drawing, and even as a kid, you know, I used to make models, you know, model airplanes, model boats, stuff like that. I was always kind of doing that thing, but I was never had the confidence to be able to do it in public. So I had all these little drawings I'd make, whatever, and I'd more or less throw money on someone. And it took until my probably 40s before I really didn't give a sh what people thought about my work. And I would, you know, I'm saying I'd put it out there, and there's always people critiquing, but I learned to get past that point of like uh shyness.
SPEAKER_00Is there a um a teacher along the way, either as uh when you were a kid or even later on, who kind of showed you or gave you encouragement and showed you, you know, this is what you can do.
SPEAKER_02Right. Well, you know, your mother is always your greatest fan. And one of the things I'm super grateful for is I was one of seven kids, and so you know, we didn't have a lot of like shadowy time, you know. We didn't uh how do I say we weren't overly uh critiqued by our parents, and when I would do something, you know, a little piece or whatever, they would say that's really nice. And so here again, the carrot of the idea was you know, I always wanted to uh show my parents, and they would compliment me. And everybody in my kind of inner circle has always been very complimentary, and that's what's kept me motivated to do it, you know. If it was just for myself, I wouldn't do it for a paycheck, you know. My whole life I dreamed about being able to be at the point in life to do what I wanted to, and you know, it when I graduated from high school, it was the middle of the farm crisis, and our whole entire industry in these small communities changed instantly, you know, within three, four months. And my only choice was to either get a job somewhere for like five bucks an hour or go to college. Luckily, I was you know, I got into Iowa State because they take everybody. And it wasn't super far away, and I got a really good education, you know, in the design college at Iowa State, and I felt like that gave me the perspective of an artist and not just a day laborer. You know.
SPEAKER_00How so?
SPEAKER_02Well, at that time of the of our Midwest, nobody had money, nobody was making very much money, and opportunities just weren't very good. So I was either gonna have to move to a bigger city and get a job as you know, welding or doing some, you know, trade, or I was gonna go to school and learn something that was maybe a little more, I don't know the term, I don't want to sound like the trades are downer, but I want to be a little more on the front end of the having inspiration to be able to do it instead of just implementing somebody else's work, you know. And the cold, hard lesson I learned about that was like there's all kinds of people doing that job, you know. If you don't have a network behind you, it's hard, and that's why I had to take other jobs in the meanwhile to be able to you know supplement my art.
SPEAKER_00So food is there a first time where you create something and your first display of public art?
SPEAKER_02Well, when I was in at Iowa State, we would have to do these projects. You have to get up in front of your peers, you know, your classmates and the instructors, and propose, you know, show your proposal and your ideas. That was the first time I was able to um be able to show anything beyond just like the dog. And that really opened a lot of avenues for me because I was painfully shy. I was I didn't come from like a design background, you know, a lot of my you know classmates, you know, their parents, you know, owned an architecture firm or uh their mom was a graphic designer and their dad was a profess you know they were like they weren't like me, you know. I was kind of like a farm boy. And so being able to the first time when I would I would have been like 19, you know, but up until then it's all secret. And then once you have to propose, and you know, I learned from being so shy that you gotta be able to not give it, you know, don't care what other people think about your comments. You don't want to be rude, but I'm just saying, like, my opinion, I no longer cared that it didn't match up with somebody's ideals, you know.
SPEAKER_00So as you're getting older, you have this business, but are you doing uh art on the side and showing it, or does that only start once once, as you said, COVID hit?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, um, so I used to go to uh art fairs, you know, every little bigger city had an art fair, and I'd go to those and pedal my wares, and I like doing that, but that's a lot of work, you know. You work all week and load up on Friday and go to the show and come back on Sunday and you gotta do it over again. So um, I mean, I like that, and that got me into it, and then I'm like, man, we're gonna, you know, try to work, and I'm grateful to my wife for you know being able to like let me jump out of that, you know, perfectly good airplane. And so that really, and then there was a couple of my friends that I met, you know, I I reconnected with after college. They were kind of were as working artists, you know, and so talking to them was like, wow, that was huge, you know. Find out what things they struggle with, you know.
SPEAKER_00What'd you learn from them?
SPEAKER_02Part of it was don't think your efforts are not good enough, you know. And then the other thing about, well, of course, most of them are women, but they know how to charge. You know, they they value their work probably more than I value my work. And so for me, that's been, you know, you really gotta value what you're doing, or else you don't get the true benefit of being an artist. And so I I started doing big paintings, you know, for my house. And I really like those because I've been able to do these abstract forms that, you know, they don't really mean anything to anybody else, just me. And and you know, that's the only reason people buy artwork is if it speaks to them. I just felt like, you know, well, if it speaks to me, it probably speaks to somebody.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_02So I've been moving more to that direction just because it's harder to do a lot of the heavy lifting and stuff, you know.
SPEAKER_00Is there a first time or a first time in your life when you really start to feel like I'm doing it? I'm an artist.
SPEAKER_02I'm really stubborn in my ways. Like I hate to give up because I don't know what the outcome could have been. And so I'm one of those kind of people that probably to my own detriment, never gives up. I never ever feel like I can do that. It's like I base my whole existence on, you know, reaching certain goals and certain, you know, I mean, proving to myself certain things I can do. And that's how I was able to transition into it. But there was a lot of luck along the way, too, you know. Like I started 2014 doing these um small little, I'd call them artistic pieces in a garden space where nothing else would grow. And that then built onto going to the art shows, and then that built on to you know building bigger pieces and and then applying to some public art walks, you know. And that was, you know, I never thought any of my stuff would be good enough, but you know, it's a it's a it's a sweet business model. I wish more artists knew about how that works, you know.
SPEAKER_00Seems like it's working. I mean, when you look at the number of pieces that you have out just now in Sioux Falls, for example, I think you got like seven or eight pieces there. That's uh pretty.
SPEAKER_02They must think I have something on them. You know, my wife always says, don't be self-deprecating. But yeah, I'm I can't just say, oh, my stuff is so cool because anybody can do what I do. I just do what speaks to me. And you know, I I've never tried to be like some artists are really super detailed, you know. Like I find that I I grow bored, you know, after I have this mindset and this kind of um picture in my head of what it's gonna be and kind of a you know what the what the artist statement would be and what it speaks to. Once I get that past, I'm like, okay, man, let's do something different. So, you know, I I'm not as detailed as others, you know. I I feel like a lot of my stuff looks good at 30 feet, and that's how I try to make them visible. You know, their best view is from 30 feet away.
SPEAKER_00And if it works for you, and it clearly is clearly it's working for Stu Falk. And then you have a list here, your pieces this year, and you can please correct me if I'm wrong. Uh you've got uh a piece called Hoopla. You've got a piece called Burr Oak. You've got a piece called uh the writing's a little small for me here. Lupine. Oh, Lupine and uh Lupine and um flambeau.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's in New Orleans kind of deal.
SPEAKER_00Can you uh take some of these and just kind of run through them a little bit and tell us just give us like snapshots of of what they're about?
SPEAKER_02Right. So let's see, what was the first one you mentioned? Uh a hoopla? Hoopla, okay. So hoopla is basically some round tube, I rolled some round circles of tube, and I don't know why, but somewhere we were at a festival or something, and we saw people uh using hula hoops. You know, when we were kids, them things were like everywhere, and I hadn't seen those things in a long time. And anyway, those people were doing that, and I thought about the most minimalistic, you know, way to portray that idea. So I used just these curved, you know, pieces of tube and and used some color, you know, and so that was kind of that. Um and it's people have picked up on them, they like it. You know, color is what people like. One of the things I deal with is those, you know, bright, you know, lime greens and blues and so on, they fade rapidly because the pigments in their paint are not natural, you know. Dark earth tones are natural tones made from you know grit. So using those colors is kind of risky. I have to plan to try to you know do maintenance on them every three or four years, repaint them and so on. So that's the only downside of paint. So, but yeah, Hooplo is just this kind of non-denominational person.
SPEAKER_00How about the uh New Orleans institutional?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so uh we talked about going to Mardi Gras all the time. And last year, I think it was, I started playing around with heating up plexiglass and bending it to see what kind of forms I could make. And I'm always big on plant forms, you know. That's kind of my I always like a natural, a nature element. Sorry about that. So it was along about uh Lent and Easter, and with you know, I thought about visiting New Orleans, but I'm like that whole celebration is Christian. It's uh it's based on um religion, but yet it's now this crazy, you know, like area, and that flambeau is like taking into account a plant that would be a New Orleans kind of look.
SPEAKER_00What do you think is the importance of having public art in towns, big and small, across the country?
SPEAKER_02Well, it gets people to stop for one second and think about something other than their rushing, Russian lives. And one thing I noticed about it is first everybody's like, oh, that's so cool, whatever. And then over time it becomes just like part of the background. But then when you take it out, people are like, hey, where'd that thing go? What's going on? What's the story? And so it's like uh people relate to it a little bit on a daily basis or every time they see it, but subconsciously they don't know that they're reacting to it positively, and so you know, if you were able to put a bunch of you know tentacles on your head with you know a fun meter, you would be able to, as people walk by, experience just a little bit of a happy image or something that jogs their mind, it it helps their inner well-being.
SPEAKER_00Have you ever had the experience of being near one of your pieces, perhaps as it's being installed, and somebody walks by and says, Oh, that looks like a something to me. And it's completely different from what you had in mind.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I know. And you know, one of the hardest I think about this a lot, like when I design or try to figure out a piece, I'm like, I don't want to look like you know, a bad mitten, you know, racket or a uh a wicket from a you know, so I try to not let it look like something that's easily recognizable, but yeah, it's hard. You know, when you look at a cloud and everybody says, Oh, I think I see a blinking. But when clouds, but when you uh yeah, when people look at an art piece, they all have a different, you know. Some people react to colors, some people react to forms, you know, so it's kind of interesting how everyone has a different way they experience it.
SPEAKER_00And did you have to learn how to be okay with that? Like to not kill you, to not say to them, no, look, I'm I'm the artist, and here's what it means.
SPEAKER_02I I mean, I used to think I want people to get it, I want people to understand the piece I'm making, but now I'm like, if they think something different about it, that's great. So, you know, I've I've played a lot with abstract human forms and then like leaves and nature things, but yeah, if they see something different, I'm usually cool. That's it. That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_00You know what? Just as long as they're paying attention to it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I what am I gonna do? Bitch them out or you know, correct them. They're not like big deal. We don't, I don't care what you think. You know, it's my brain, I'll do what I want.
SPEAKER_00I work for four months on this, and you got the wrong impression of this? Nah, I don't I'm not that way. No, no, no, no. Um I'm I'm I'm not an artist, but I can probably appreciate that's probably not a good way to go. Yeah. That's right. That's right. How about the importance of uh arts education in schools? It's huge.
SPEAKER_02You know, when I was growing up, we didn't have a lot of art. You know, we're real like ag school, you know, high school is all math. You know, we didn't have a lot of extended art programs that I think are available today. You know, I talk to young kids, but the issue they run into is they don't know how to go from being educated to getting a job and making it pay. You know, and that's the one thing I would like to see a better transition because nothing is no business model is the same for everybody. But I stumbled into mine by accident and I thought, wow, nobody ever would have told me that this is how you do it, you know. So I just think that we could make better artists by making them more employable, by helping them be able to develop a business model that works for them, that they can, you know, maybe not survive 100%, but they can supplement their income.
SPEAKER_00It sounds like, from the little I know you, that you wanted for years to do this artwork full-time, this public art, and you started and you did some, and but now you're at a point where you are doing it. And it's shown, you know, all over the Midwest and beyond. And I'm curious if because of those years of wanting to do it, whether it feels no, seriously, whether it feels that much more feels that much better or fulfilling because you you dreamed it at one point and you aspired to it, and now you're doing it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I'll tell you the it's it's the greatest thing that I could ever could have imagined. And because for a lot of years, I was you know, when I got out college, I was broke, and I wasn't a trust one baby. So for all these years, I had to work. I didn't have a choice of whether I could, you know, do art on the side. And and but and as such, I was exhausted. You know, I just I was I didn't have the energy. And you know, when COVID came around, and actually before then, I was able to start saying, you know what? I've worked for other people my whole life. I'm gonna start doing something for myself. And little by little I was able to transition, you know, with the help of of my wife. We don't have children, so there's all these luck things that come into play too. You know? If I would have had three or four kids, I never would have been able to experience this. But maybe I would have indulged into their lives more, you know. And so some of my motivation comes from just that loneliness aspect where you just, you know, you gotta do something, you know.
SPEAKER_00You can't just anyway, don't you get too great with it. And you have, and you've created these pieces of art that are shown, you know, all over the country. Yeah. It's pretty great. It's pretty great. I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's yeah. I'm in a really great space, you know. I just I worry that I my only worry is that one day it'll it'll end and I'm like, damn it. You know. But as long as I'm alive and kicking and feel good, I'm gonna keep doing it.
SPEAKER_00Seems to be going pretty well right now.
SPEAKER_02I wish everyone could have the pleasure of the experiences I have, you know. I feel bad for people that don't get to have that. I feel so blessed to be able to have the opportunities that have been, you know, given to me.
SPEAKER_00So you mean in the sense of finding your passion and being able to fulfill that passion?
SPEAKER_02Yep. Maneuver the world to make it, you know, what I want for me and my wife.
SPEAKER_00How about the chapter of having to transport the artwork to these places? Let me guess. That just goes smoothly every single time, huh?
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm in a pretty unique position because I have a nice big flatbed truck and trailers and everything from we had our garden center. You know, so not everybody has that. So I'm fortunate that I have a little uh, you know, a little, I've got a forklift, I've got a little skid steer, I've got, you know. And then a lot of that uh equipment that we used to use in the landscape business, I was able to more or less flip to buy equipment for metalworking, you know. So it was kind of just the timing, like the middle of of uh COVID was nothing was being built, nothing was being shipped, you know. Well, I had all this equipment that you know you couldn't get a Kubota tractor with 65 horses anywhere. I was trying to sell one. So I got better prices out of that equipment than I really deserved. But the timing was just, you know, that that was it, you know. And I was like, wow, now this is this is gold.
SPEAKER_00You know what? So anyway, there's an old saying in baseball that all line drives in the box score. Meaning, back when you used to have box scores in newspapers and you see how many hits a guy had, right? It didn't specify whether the hit was off the wall or a little dribble drop in front of a plate. It's a hit, right? You say you say that you had this and you were able to get more money because of COVID. It's like, okay. You know.
SPEAKER_02It just you know, and then it allowed me to lay in more raw materials and stuff like that because then prices of that started going through the roof. You know, so just standing in the right corner when the when the when the magic man came by. You know, I admit that totally.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's okay. Good for the magic man coming by. Love that. Love that. Tim, thanks so much for the conversation. I really appreciate it. Bud, it's been awesome. Artist Tim Adams. You can learn more about him at his website, TimAdamsArtist. I'm Bud Nitchkin. Thanks for listening to this episode of Travel Treasures Across America.