a real rock guitarist
Tim Marshal Curtis a real rock guitarist
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin spending most of his life in the Chicago area. His musical family included a grandfather that was a fourpiece one-man band (drums, guitar, harmonica, and singing) with 50 consecutive appearances at the Wisconsin State Fair.
Tim attended Antioch High School, on the northern edge of Illinois, and played the trumpet. During his sophomore year, one day in 1980, there was an earie vibe at Antioch High School the school. 
Led Zeppelin was coming to town and everyone had tickets. John Bonham, the band’s drummer, had unexpectedly passed away. The passing had a profound impact on everyone.
He studied architecture at Western Illinois University. During his second year of college, he attended Iowa State University where he built an art portfolio and was accepted to the Art Institute of Chicago which specialized in large structures. The studio was located inside an old locomotive repair station with a huge overhead crane that helped moving large sculptures. Tim was taken in as an apprentice for three years and graduated in 1988 with top honors.
Tim learned how to fashion art in every medium. He became a very talented sculpture who ended up teaching his instructors how to weld aluminum. The graduates’ exhibits usually resulted in the new graduates being hired at other art institutes. Artist David Nelson released a portrait of the mayor in drag. An alderman removed the painting and the censorship ignited protests which ruined the exhibition for the graduates.
He was young and doing well but needed to go to New York or Los Angeles to grow as an artist. He loved California and he knew his artistic style would go well in Los Angeles, but didn’t like the Hollywood acting thing. It seemed too fake. He didn’t want to act like an artist.
Tim went to Italy instead and started carving marble in Pietrasanta, a small community near the famous Carrara marble quarries. While in Europe, he bought his first guitar, a Gibson “Flying V”, with the intention of traveling with a rock star marble carving music group. He assumed he would be fabulously successful. Like any creative art, the good musicians make it look easy but it’s not. If he learned how to play guitar really well, Tim felt it would help carving form really well. He wanted to learn why musicians did what they do and why they behave the way they do. Tim wanted to learn the essence of why and how guitar musicians are successful.
At first, he wanted to carve a Jeff Beck-like guitarist pose, standing straight up, legs spread wider than shoulders, and leaning backwards. However, he found a large 3500lb triangular block of marble which worked with a carving in an Eddie Van Halen-like guitarist pose, playing on one knee. Tim’s marble sculpture is called, “He is what he is – an electric rock guitarist”, pun very much intended.
After returning to the U.S., Tim sailed an older boat down the East Coast to Key West in 1994. Like many other artists, he fell in love with Key West and never left. He would work on his boat and when he ran out of money, he would return to Chicago and work on sculptures of others to generate some income. He did this dual existence for about five years. He met a wonderful lady Marlesa and they married in 2000. In 2005, their daughter Trinity was born. Trinity has blossomed into a very good musician and vocalist. Tim and Trinity have performed together at the Key West Musician Festival.
One of the highlights of Tim’s art career was winning prize money at Sculpture Key West in 2003. His “Viking” sculpture was placed on a gun turret on top of Fort Jefferson.
After losing his sailboat during Hurricane Irma, Tim started to feel the energy that he put into maintaining his sailboat was energy lost expressing his art. He has re-focused all of his efforts on music and sculpture. He had a successful music show with percussionist Hiram Garzaro, and bassist Jeff Dalton which was a near sell out.
Recently, Tim received two jazz lessons from Larry Smith and later, another from Larry Baeder. To grow as a musician, jazz is his new avenue of pursuit. Tim is writing music again and presented a new song at last week’s Monday Jazz Jam at American Legion Post 168, with Skipper Kripitz and Larry Baeder.
With sculpture there is usually a sweet spot between dimension, shape, and size. It’s very similar to finding the perfect tempo of a song. Finding the dimensions in full scale is very similar. When working on small sculptures he is however always thinking big.
Tim says some of his best results have come from experiments gone wrong. He has discovered that the process of discovery is linked directly to improvisation – much like jazz. Recently, Tim had a great solo sculpture show at the Studios of Key West. He feels this show gave new dimensions to his popularity and will hopefully inspire more creativity.
There are no comments yet, add one below.
Leave a Reply