LOCAL ARTIST OF THE WEEK

Buddhists believe that every living being is sacred. Where some people may see a fly as a pest, others may see a magnificent piece of art. Where one might view dried flower petals as useless, another may see it as perfection.

A person would have to look very closely to see that kind of beauty in everyday life. Ben Timpson looks under a magnifying glass.

Timpson studied photography in college. His first job was at a camera store. Color labs across the country started shutting down because photography was going digital.

Soon after he got fired, he started to burn his 35mm film. Something about the way the burning film looked caught his eye. He decided it was beautiful and then put plant roots onto the sepia background and decided that was beautiful too.

He put the slide into a projector and started to introduce different mediums: hair, flowers, crickets, flies, blood, bone, honey.

Timpson creates a mixture of sculpture and photography on a miniature scale. His original pieces are crafted on a piece of slide film and are viewed through a magnifying glass.

Prints are enlarged versions of the original slide and range in cost from $10 to $5,000. Timpson uses tweezers like a painter uses a paintbrush or a poet uses language. His work is precise.

His's first book, "End of the Roll: Goodnight 35mm" is available for purchase at amazon.com. His second book, "Inside Nothing: Is Everything" will be available soon. To view a short film on how Timpson creates his art, visit http://organicprocess.com.

Next Event: Kulture Klash, November 15. More information will be announced soon.

Website: http://goodnight35.com.

Birth date and place: Aug. 11, 1979, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Residence: Downtown Charleston for 3 weeks.

Family: Mother, Pamela Timpson; father, Carl Timpson; brother Eric Timpson.

What inspires you?: Life, pain, music, love, hatred, humans, comedy, everything really. It is hard to say. We live in such a beautiful natural world once you strip the signs off the freeway. But that is how you see the beauty if the bad is there.

Goals: To teach at the Guggenheim in Spain and have my art featured there as well.

In what direction is your art heading?: All of them, every medium is a path to another medium which is always connected to some visual emotion.

Contact Vikki Matsis at julystar_17@yahoo.com.