Tim Eads (Cranbrook)

Weighing down, 2007
Ceramic, wire and bolts

My name is Tim Eads. I am here at Cranbrook. I’m working primarily in ceramics, although wood often comes up in my work. I’m currently experimenting and trying to play with clay and take it to its limits. I’m working with gravity and trying to play with that idea.

I grew up in a small town in west Texas, working on a farm for the most part. We raised animals – cows, goats, horses. The landscape is really flat. Things stuck out of the landscape that influenced my work. Things like oil refineries, windmills, grain elevators, were always sort of intriguing to me as a small person walking up to those.

After I left the small town, I went to undergrad at Texas Tech. I have a bachelor’s degree in graphic design. I did that for six or seven years until it became really boring to me. I moved on to teaching high school. I have been doing that for about five years. Somewhere along there my younger brother started me working with clay. I got the bug.

Currently here at Cranbrook, I am taking those influences from my childhood, those monumental objects from the landscape, the windmills and things, and specifically pulling out those ideas and dealing with those in my work. Whether that be monumental, or daunting, or architectural, I’m specifically working on those ideas on my work here.