Huntington Beach Art Center

The exhibition will feature ceramic sculptural work by Charles Timm-Ballard and sound/light sculptures by Andre Woodward.

The Huntington Beach Art Center is presenting an original curated exhibition opening in the main galleries, entitled, Dual Arboretum. This two-person exhibition features 18 ceramic sculptural works by Washington based artist Charles Timm-Ballard and 17 sound/light sculptures by Orange County based artist André Woodward. The exhibition will feature works from 2008 through 2010, including new works never previously exhibited.

Influenced by the industrial cities of the Midwest and a strip mining equipment factory, Timm-Ballard’s works grow out of the environment’s contrast between the open expanse of the untouched space that Lake Michigan presented, and the industrial landscape.  His studio work has been involved in the mining experiences of these landscapes, one that is uniquely working class, urban, and industrial. He investigates the traditions of landscape representation in painting and sculptural concerns in ceramic material allowing him to operate in the earthly qualities and the more ethereal qualities of light presented by a painting or drawing.  The landscaped images are made out of feldspathic material fused of earthly materials with references to dendritic forms such as, roots, river systems, nerve and venous systems and structures of thought and growth.

The artist Charles Timm-Ballard was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and received his M.F.A. from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.  He currently resides in Walla Walla, Washington where he maintains his studio and is the department chair of studio art at Whitman College.  He has exhibited throughout the United States and The Netherlands.

Woodward’s works function not as a single stagnant moment, but as an infinite number of moments unique to the viewer.  These specific moments function similarly to Koans—stories in the form of questions or statements, not solving the paradox of nature and man, but gaining a spiritual awareness to the natural human environment.  The environment is created by human control and not nature in its traditional sense.  This act of controlling a new environment, specifically a natural human environment, where bird songs and the sound of changing winds have combined with the music flowing from mp3 players and the hum of power lines, and the smell of blooming flowers and the brine of the ocean melted with smells of local restaurants, and the tree lines have been replaced with roof tops forms a paradox of our nature. The sculptures are no longer an object mimicking a state of reality, but each its own living reality.

The artist André Woodward was born in Newport Beach, California and received his M.F.A. from California State University, Long Beach.  He currently resides in Costa Mesa, California where he maintains his studio. He has exhibited throughout California.