Tim Segar - Sculpture
Tim Segar says that the most delicate and important thing about teaching art is striking the right balance
for students between information, inspiration, and permission. "Students of art need enough technique and
process to act on their ideas. They also need to be inspired by the example of other artists – both historical
and contemporary. They equally need permission to follow their own impulses and designs in order to test
their work against the range of work they come to know. In the end that balance is a matter of paying attention
to individuals and helping them find their own way."
Tim Segar’s teaching reflects the work he does in his own studio insofar as he spends a roughly equal time working in two and three dimensions. "The teaching of drawing is a partner to the teaching of sculpture. While sculpture proceeds slowly and technically, drawing can more nimbly seek ideas and forms."
Tim maintains that "Even though sculpture is a technical medium, so much can be learned from humble materials and simple techniques, using cardboard, clay, plaster, and wood. The development of a vocabulary of form is far more important, in the beginning, than a range of complex techniques."
Teaching art as part of a liberal education as well as a discipline of its own is important to Tim. This has led him to teach courses both across the arts with Music and Theater faculty (Poesis) and with teachers of history, anthropology, and poetry (Icons and Iconoclasm).
Before Marlboro Tim taught for several years at Amherst College. He has exhibited his work throughout the Northeast, in California, and in France.
B.F.A., Rhode Island School of Design, 1975; M.A., University of California at Berkeley, 1978; M.F.A., University of California at Berkeley, 1979, Marlboro College, 1998-