Timothy Ely

Timothy C. Ely (born February 9, 1949) is a contemporary American painter, graphic artist, and bookbinder, known for creating single-copy handmade books as art objects.

His one-of-kind manuscript books combine elaborate and often mysterious painted and drawn folios contained within finely crafted bindings, which are his inventions or variations on traditional binding techniques. Each book carries layers of both materials and meaning. Close study of each drawing can elicit revelations, personal to each viewer.

Born in Snohomish, Washington in 1949, Ely has been making books since he was a child, mixing drawing, painting, and words in his journals and stapled comic books. His childhood interests in such topics as astronomy and chemistry have carried forward into his adult work. He was deeply influenced by his father’s hardware store and the local public library, where he spent his time after school. It was later, during his undergraduate studies (Western Washington University, BA 1972), that Ely’s philosophy of art, expression, and books began to coalesce. Following graduate school (University of Washington, MFA 1975), Ely undertook a self-directed study of bookbinding and began to fabricate the work he is known for today: a fusion of his unique take on English style binding techniques with his visionary drawings.

For the last forty years, his books and other works have sprung from a central core of concepts, owing to a fascination with obscure or seemingly incomprehensible forms inspired by science and other projections from the history of the human imagination. This spectrum of inspiration includes such things as fractured and whole grids, cypher systems, landforms and landscapes as viewed from a satellite, and the archeological overlay of some of these sites, especially those containing libraries. Originally, the atlas format provided a platform for the rendering of his complex maps, which gradually gave way to an expanded psychological viewpoint of a larger universal scheme.

Much of Ely’s work is richly annotated with his own glyphs he calls “cribriform.” While they are made up of a finite set of marks, they take on many different “meanings” depending on the tool with which they are drawn. He has written and spoken often about the roots and evolution of these drawings. Gestural in their formation, these trailings evoke a sense of language and meaningful discourse. Though suggestive, they never yield up a firm translation.

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