Their two recent collaborations,
Apothecarium Moderne
and
Seven Deadly Sins,
were better because they made them together.
STORY BY
J u lie K . H a nus
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
P e te D llV a ll
Apothecarium Moderne
reliquary finials:
Top:
Cure for
Overpopulation,
stuffed with condoms
Middle:
Cure for
Identity Theft,
with a
fingerprint image the
artists say was “stolen
from the Internet”
Bottom:
Cure for
Intelligent Design,
a cast-
glass riff on
The Thinker
A S K T IM T A T E A B O U T TH E
origin of his recent collabora-
tions with Marc Petrovic - if
you can beat him to the punch.
The friendly, boisterous artist
has a habit of plunging into sto-
ries, leaping ahead and around,
as if his brain were a rocket
fueled by honesty.
“I posted a cat - playing a
piano - on Facebook,” he vol-
unteers. “I’m not proud
- 1
thought it was cute, and I don’t
care who knows.” In response
to said viral video, the chief cu-
rator at New York’s Museum
of Arts and Design posted a
comment, joking that he ought
to have that cat perform at his
museum. Tate pounced, pitched
an idea, and, as he tells it, had a
slot within 24 hours in M A D ’s
“Dead or Alive” exhibition,
a prestigious 2010 showcase of
artists incorporating organic
materials in sculpture and instal-
lation. Tate contacted Petrovic
- another artist working in
glass, a friend, and a mentor of
sorts - and he agreed to collabo-
rate.
Apothecarium M oderne,
a set of nine cures for modern
ills in domed glass reliquaries,
was born.
Seven Deadly Sins
was
lurking just around the corner.
If this sounds like a wholly
21st-century story, that’s because
it is - but not only because it has
roots in social media. This is the
age of Wikipedia, after all,
040 american craft apr/may 11
of open-source software and
Creative Commons licenses.
Connectivity and collaboration
aren’t only buzzwords; they’re
molding our lives. And in their
two recent, exquisite joint
works, Petrovic and Tate are
modeling one vision of the
interconnected future of art:
genuine collaboration.
“I was a little hesitant at
first,” Petrovic admits. “I’ve
worked with some people in
the past, and it’s always been
more working/»/- them than
with them, in various degrees.”
Tate also has experience with
less-than-equal partnerships.
He stopped planning
A poth-
ecarium
as soon as Petrovic
came on board.
The two men first met at
Penland School of Crafts in
1992. Tate - young and hungry
for a glass education that wasn’t
available back then near his
home turf of Washington, D.C.
- says he trailed Petrovic “like a
puppy dog,” taking every class
he taught. “He trained me to
think in that Joseph Cornellian
way that he and I both love to
Tim Tate (left) and
Marc Petrovic work in
separate cities, but they
are brought together in
this still life through the
magic of the tiny video
screens that they use in
many of their glass sculp-
tures. Photographed
at Tate’s studio in
Washington, D.C.
www.downmagaz.com
