Tim Jennen
Drawings from the series Freeze Frame Drawings
I’m an artist who focuses on drawing as a means of direct and personal engagement with people and the world. My main art series and projects have been developed specifically to take place on social media.
Freeze Frame Drawings is a series that began as a technical, ‘drawing a day’ exercise, but is now over 1,000 drawings that form an idiosyncratic, personal visual diary that spans the history of cinema, television and the digital age.
The Alternative Tim Jennens was an early take on Facebook profile pictures and self-congratulating posts, a self-portrait series presenting alternative versions of myself while commenting on the world we live in through the creation of worlds that might have been.
Images from the series The Alternative Tim Jennens
Superheroes I Have Known is a re-imagined take on events from my own life, into which the superheroes that have had a strong hold in my imagination since childhood are inserted: the Incredible Hulk comes across a cemetery in rural Minnesota; Robin The Boy Wonder sneaks out of Mass at a Catholic Church immediately after Communion; the Avengers attend a panel discussion on poverty at the Minnesota Museum of American Art.
Superman runs into Lois Lane at the Walker, January 1983, 2014 - 0.7 Mechanical Pencil Pentel HB, Kimberly 9XXB graphite pencil, Cretacolor Nero pencil 1, Quattro Artist Blank notebook
In 2017, I received an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, made possible by the voters of Minnesota and thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, for development of The Saga of Harvey & Shifra, a graphic novel I am creating with writer Miriam-Rachel Oxenhandler Newman about two Jewish cows from New Jersey, who relocate to rural Wisconsin.
Pages from The Saga of Harvey & Shifra ©2021 Miriam-Rachel Oxenhandler Newman and Tim Jennen
My work has been shown in various group exhibitions, and my illustrations and cartoons have appeared in local publications. I’ve taught classes and workshops on comics, cartooning and caricature at the MN Museum of American Art and The Art Academy in Saint Paul. I co-founded MetroSketchers, a monthly Twin Cities drawing group created by artist Liz Carlson, with the mission of getting people out in the world to draw, and co-hosted the Gesture Drawing Co-operative at The Art Academy.
You can see more of Tim’s work on his Facebook and Instagram pages. He can be contacted by email at llacstudio308@gmail.com.