Like Love

My artworks probe conditions of subjectivity and objectivity. They explore the connection‑sometimes conflict‑between here and there, presence and memory, the physical experience of touch and the cognitive experience of the mind.

Surrounded by scarcity during an authoritarian political regime, I grew up making things. In the 1970s and 1980s, DIY was a way to gain independence and exercise my rebellion and self-definition, and wielding a sewing needle was a large part of that. The material world that surrounded us in the Eastern Bloc was cobbled together from hand-me-downs, which, in turn, became tokens of history and memory, taking on a new life as the stories that circulated through them. The labor of making by hand, the tenderness with which textiles are mended and the soil is tended are my family and ethnic heritage. Generations of my women toiled with big bales of cloth on factory floors, wove, embroidered, washed and ironed linen at home, mending it constantly to pass it on again to the next generation. While I mostly work with technological tools, such as 3D printers, scanners, software and code now, I still use my hands extensively. Both my process and the patterns I use for inspirations are rooted in textiles and textile making practices from Hungary. Clay, extruded by the 3D printer into a thin coil, becomes the thread that makes up this fabric of stories about cloth, women, and memory.

Timea Tihanyi

Timea Tihanyi is a Hungarian born interdisciplinary visual artist and ceramicist living and working in Seattle. Tihanyi holds a Doctor of Medicine degree from Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary; a BFA in Ceramics from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston; and an MFA in ceramics from the University of Washington.

Tihanyi’s work has been exhibited in Australia, Brazil, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and in the United States, including the Bellevue Arts Museum, Henry Art Gallery, Mint Museum of Art and Design, Society for Contemporary Craft,, Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences, Foundry Art Center, International Museum of Surgical Science, SculptureSpace NYC, and the Museum of Glass. Her most recent recognitions include the 2018 Neddy Award in Open Media, a 2018-19 Bergstrom Award, and a New Foundation travel grant. Tihanyi is a Teaching Professor in the Interdisciplinary Visual Arts program at the University of Washington. She is the founder and director of Slip Rabbit, a unique research and mentoring space for digital ceramics.

Tihanyi’s work is represented by the Linda Hodges Gallery, Seattle.