Photos by Eden Anyabwile
“I first met Tim at New City, and he was singing along with a handheld puppet,” said Professor Jeffrey Morton of Tim Goldsmith, the artist behind the show “This Page Intentionally Left Blank.”
Goldsmith was born and raised in Chattanooga, TN, and graduated from Covenant College in 2012 with a degree in art. For the past few years, he has been obtaining his Master of Fine Arts in Socially Engaged Studio Art at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, PA, and recently moved back to Chattanooga after graduating. He grew up in the PCA, and sees his art as integral to his faith. “My art is in dialogue with the church. I’m trying to figure out what the role of visual art and faith and life in the church is and what that intersection is,” he said.
This exhibit, entitled “This Page Intentionally Left Blank,” was Goldsmith’s thesis project at Moore. The title comes from the formal practice, specifically for legal and military documents, of leaving certain pages blank to ensure that the beginning of each new section is printed on the right side of the page.
In this work, Goldsmith took The Book of Church Order, the book of the PCA and its structure, and laser cut out every single letter of the Constitution section, about half the book. He then went through and annotated it with invisible ink, writing down his own thoughts and questions and engagements with the theology of the PCA. Viewers are invited to take a blacklight flashlight in the semi-dark gallery and shine it on the pages that hang on the wall in order to read Goldsmith’s thoughts.
Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt facilitated the discussion during the opening, and asked Goldsmith about the actual process of creating this work, particularly why he used the materials he did, and how he ended up with what is now hanging in Kresge’s art gallery.
Goldsmith said, “The laser cutter allowed the words of the text to be what they were. I didn’t edit them, I didn’t change them, I didn’t write The Book of Church Order. It was really important to me that it stayed what it was. The invisible ink is a childlike thing… that makes you curious.”
He sees it as an invitation for the viewer to interact with something they might not otherwise interact with. That being said, Goldsmith also wants the viewer to experience a little of the discomfort that he experienced when working through The Book of Church Order and having conversations with leadership in the PCA.
“You are working. And I don’t mind asking my viewer to work to look at things. Sometimes I think that art doesn't ask that enough of its viewer,” Goldsmith said when Weichbrodt remarked that people were in each other’s space trying to find the secret messages with their blacklights. “And as the viewer you have the choice to engage or not. I’m not forcing you to do that, but I think it’s okay to ask that.”
Goldsmith then went on to say that his goal, and a large part of his practice as an artist, is to start conversations and to help facilitate them between his viewers. “One of the tenets of socially engaged art is that you speak to your own community first before you have any business speaking to any other community,” he said. The PCA is Tim Goldsmith’s community, and this is his way of speaking to them.
“This Page Intentionally Left Blank” will be in the Kresge Memorial Library art gallery until November 15th.