Story by Kathryn Retzler

Kirtland, New Mexico 

TIME—IT’S NEITHER FRIEND NOR FOE to sculptor Tim Washburn. It just is. He doesn’t try to master it, anymore than he tries to master the lovely stone he so enjoys working with. “Everyone out there is in such a rush,” Tim notes. “Always in a hurry to get somewhere.” 

Not so Tim, whose inner tranquility lets him set his own pace. He’s Navajo, “so I’m living on ‘Indian Time,’” Tim laughs, referring to a uniquely Native American concept. But he does have deadlines to meet, pieces to be delivered for shows, to galleries, to collectors. At any given time, Tim usually has four or five sculptures in various stages of completion. Each takes about three months to finish. 

Still, from the time he first picked up a hand tool and began working the stone, he has done so at a careful pace, letting the stone and his own spirit guide him. “All these new guys just getting started,” he says, “use lots of power tools. They hurry everything. When we got started,” —the “we” include neighboring sculptors Oreland Joe and Alvin Marshall, all three of whom began sculpting about the same time in the early 1980s—“we did it the old way. We used mostly hand tools, and a lot of those we got from pawn shops. It takes longer, but you really put yourself into the work.” 

Although some other sculptors use apprentices, Tim prefers to work by himself. His home and studio sit on a peaceful country road. As we sit visiting on his porch, a pleasant breeze stirs the blossoms on the lawn’s bordering fruit trees. Bees buzz, birds sing, and a member of the resident deer family grazes nearby. Overhead, the sky is studded with  fluffy clouds. Across the road a farm stretches toward the horizon. This is a good place to nourish the spirit, a nourishment that clearly shows in Tim Washburn’s work.

“I consider stone the most difficult medium to work with,” Tim says. “It can’t be rushed. You can’t add on, like with bronze (cast from clay). You’re limited by the size and shape (and sometimes the color) of the stone.

Everything you do is done from the spirit to the mind then to your hands. Stone has its own timing.

“You have to know your anatomy, too,” Tim adds, “especially to put character into the faces,” one of Tim’s recognizable specialties. Each of his pieces has a haunting spiritual quality,—interesting, because Tim’s most often used model is himself. He works with a mirror a lot. But it is not so much his own physicality that comes through in his work as it is his gentle spirit. He captures the essence of himself in everything he does. “When someone says, ‘I can see your spirit in this piece’,” Tim notes, “I know I’m doing my job.”

And it is a job. Taken as a percentage, Tim says about forty percent of his time is spent promoting and selling his work.  To do it, “I had to get over my shyness,” Tim confesses. “It’s tough;  you really have to work at it. Art is not something you can eat.” Maybe not, but in over twenty years as an artist, Tim has built up an impressive list of successful sales. He’s in a “transition phase” now, he says. His work is evolving, going more into bronzes and limited editions which that medium allows. He’s also transitioning into more contemporary work in stone, much like the piece on our cover.

Only time will tell, of course, but if Tim Washburn continues to pace himself as he has in the past, and be ruled by tranquility and a very personal balance of mind, spirit and creativity, he will continue to grow and evolve into the great artist he is destined to be. “I’ve paid my dues,” Tim says, “I feel like my time is coming.” Looking at his work, it would appear that Tim’s time is already here. 

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