This article needs to be updated.(December 2019) |
Tim Tolkien | |
---|---|
Born | October 1962 (age 61) |
Nationality | English |
Known for | Sculpture |
Notable work | Sentinel |
Tim Tolkien (born October 1962) is an English sculptor who has designed several monumental sculptures, including the award-winning Sentinel .
He has a metal sculpture and public Art business at Cradley Heath, West Midlands. He is also a bass player and member of the band Klangstorm, founded in 1996.
Tim is the great-nephew of the writer J. R. R. Tolkien. He was raised in the village of Hughenden Valley and went to the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. He graduated with a degree in fine art (sculpture) from the University of Reading in 1984.
Sentinel is Tolkien's most famous work to date. In 1996, he was appointed by CAN [1] who were awarded the contract to develop public art proposals for the estate using National Lottery money, as an artist in residence to help with regeneration of the Castle Vale estate in Birmingham. The following year, he consulted with residents about an art project for the entrance to the estate. They favoured a sculpture featuring Spitfires, reflecting the area's flying history and particularly the Castle Bromwich Assembly which stood nearby. The large steel and aluminium Sentinel Spitfire sculpture was the result, showing three Spitfires peeling off up into the air in different directions. It was unveiled on 14 November 2000, near the former factory which built them, by their former test pilot Alex Henshaw.
Tolkien also sculpted a memorial to the actor Sir Cedric Hardwicke, at the latter's birthplace of Lye, West Midlands, for Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council. The memorial takes the form of a giant filmstrip, the illuminated cut metal panels illustrating scenes from some of Sir Cedric's best-known roles, which include The Hunchback of Notre Dame , The Shape of Things to Come , and The Ghost of Frankenstein . It was unveiled in November 2005.
His proposals for a 20-foot (6.1 meter) high statue of Treebeard, an Ent from The Lord of the Rings, to be erected on the Green at Moseley, near J. R. R. Tolkien's childhood home in Birmingham, have met with some controversy, but permission for its erection – originally scheduled for May 2007 – was granted by Birmingham City Council. [2] [3]
Work |
| Date | Picture |
| Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
James Watt's Mad Machine | Winson Green Metro station | 1998 | 52°29′50″N1°55′53″W / 52.497216°N 1.931290°W | Supported by Eric Klein Velderman, Paula Woof and local school pupils. [4] | |
Lanchester Car Monument | Nechells | 1995 | 52°29′35″N1°52′22″W / 52.4930°N 1.8729°W | On the site of the development of the first British petrol-engined car [5] | |
Mosaics | Menzies High School, Sandwell | With Eric Klein Velderman and pupils. [6] | |||
Millennium Sculpture | St.Nicholas School, Kenilworth | 2001 | With pupils [7] | ||
Dragonfly sculpture | Hembrook Infants and Junior school, Warwickshire | May 2003 | With Emma Dicks [8] | ||
Gateway | Belle Vue Primary School, Stourbridge | [9] | |||
Archway | Springhallow School, Ealing | With pupils. [10] | |||
Memorial to Sir Cedric Hardwicke | Lye, West Midlands | November 2005 | 52°27′32″N2°07′04″W / 52.458776°N 2.117764°W | ||
Bluebell | Sot's Hole Local Nature Reserve, West Bromwich | 2008 | 52°31′38″N1°59′05″W / 52.527268°N 1.984727°W | [11] | |
Gate | Sot's Hole Local Nature Reserve, West Bromwich | 2008 | 52°31′38″N1°59′05″W / 52.527202°N 1.984665°W | [11] | |
Gates | RSPB Sandwell Valley | 52°32′07″N1°56′53″W / 52.535371°N 1.947992°W | |||
Sentinel | Castle Bromwich | 14 November 2000 | 52°30′48″N1°47′53″W / 52.5134°N 1.7981°W | ||
Cardinal Newman statue | Birmingham Newman University | 2010 | 52°26′02″N1°59′39″W / 52.43385°N 1.99419°W | Was at Cofton Park on 19th September 2010 for Pope Benedict XVI to beautify Cardinal Newman. [12] Now located at Birmingham Newman University in the Ryland Quad of the campus. | |
Gate | Holly Wood Local Nature Reserve, Sandwell | 2012 | 52°32′54″N1°55′32″W / 52.548281°N 1.925456°W | [13] | |
Roots and Branches | Handsworth Park | 2020 | 52°30′43″N1°55′31″W / 52.51187°N 1.92524°W | With Graham Jones. Four trees with extended roots on the ground in steel which can be used as seats. [14] | |
Here and Now Bench | Handsworth Park | August 2023 | 52°30′37″N1°55′42″W / 52.51038°N 1.92825°W | Was inspired by a fairground waltzer car. Was commissioned to mark Birmingham hosting the 2022 Commonwealth Games. [15] |
Tolkien also undertook the redesign of Lea Hall railway station, Birmingham, with Eric Klein Velderman; completed in 1998) [16]
He has also worked with the singer and television presenter Toyah Willcox, designing her armour-like stage costumes and, in 2005, making a documentary film for BBC2, comparing New Zealand's successful exploitation of its movie-related J. R. R. Tolkien associations, with that of J.R.R.'s (and Toyah's) home town, Birmingham.
West Midlands is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the larger West Midlands region of England. A landlocked county, it is bordered by Staffordshire to the north and west, Worcestershire to the south, and is surrounded by Warwickshire to the east. The largest settlement is the city of Birmingham.
The West Midlands is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of International Territorial Level for statistical purposes. It covers the western half of the area traditionally known as the Midlands. The region consists of the counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Midlands and Worcestershire. The region has seven cities; Birmingham, Coventry, Hereford, Lichfield, Stoke-on-Trent, Wolverhampton and Worcester.
Handsworth is an inner-city area of Birmingham in the West Midlands, England. Historically in Staffordshire, Handsworth lies just outside Birmingham City Centre and near the town of Smethwick.
Castle Bromwich is a village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull in the West Midlands, England. It borders the rest of the borough to the south east, Sutton Coldfield to the east and north east, Shard End to the south west, Castle Vale, Erdington and Minworth to the north and Hodge Hill to the west.
The culture of Birmingham is characterised by a deep-seated tradition of individualism and experimentation, and the unusually fragmented but innovative culture that results has been widely remarked upon by commentators. Writing in 1969, the New York-based urbanist Jane Jacobs cast Birmingham as one of the world's great examples of urban creativity: surveying its history from the 16th to the 20th centuries she described it as a "great, confused laboratory of ideas", noting how its chaotic structure as a "muddle of oddments" meant that it "grew through constant diversification". The historian G. M. Young – in a classic comparison later expanded upon by Asa Briggs – contrasted the "experimental, adventurous, diverse" culture of Birmingham with the "solid, uniform, pacific" culture of the outwardly similar city of Manchester. The American economist Edward Gleason wrote in 2011 that "cities, the dense agglomerations that dot the globe, have been engines of innovation since Plato and Socrates bickered in an Athenian marketplace. The streets of Florence gave us the Renaissance and the streets of Birmingham gave us the Industrial Revolution", concluding: "wandering these cities ... is to study nothing less than human progress."
St Mary's Church, Handsworth, also known as Handsworth Old Church, is a Grade II* listed Anglican church in Handsworth, Birmingham, England. Its ten-acre (4 hectare) grounds are contiguous with Handsworth Park. It lies just off the Birmingham Outer Circle, and south of a cutting housing the site of the former Handsworth Wood railway station. It is noteworthy as the resting place of famous progenitors of the industrial age, and has been described as the "Cathedral of the Industrial Revolution".
Sentinel is a 16-metre-high (52 ft) sculpture by Tim Tolkien, installed upon Spitfire Island, a roundabout at the intersection of the Chester Road and the A47 Fort Parkway at the entrance to the Castle Vale estate in Birmingham, England.
Lye or The Lye is a town in the Dudley Metropolitan Borough, in the West Midlands county, England, 1 mile (1.6 km) east of Stourbridge and borders with Pedmore and Wollescote.
The Tolkien family is an English family of German descent whose best-known member is J. R. R. Tolkien, Oxford academic and author of the fantasy books The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.
Castle Bromwich Aerodrome was an early airfield, situated to the north of Castle Bromwich in the West Midlands of England. The site now falls within the City of Birmingham.
Handsworth Park is a park in the Handsworth area of Birmingham, England. It lies 15 minutes by bus from the centre of Birmingham and comprises 63 acres of landscaped grass slopes, including a large boating lake and a smaller pond fed by the Farcroft and Grove Brooks, flower beds, mature trees and shrubs with a diversity of wildlife, adjoining St. Mary's Church, Handsworth to the north, containing the graves of the fathers of the Industrial Revolution, James Watt, Matthew Boulton and William Murdoch, and the founders of Aston Villa Football Club and the Victoria Jubilee Allotments site to the south opened on 12 June 2010. The completion of a £9.5 million restoration and rejuvenation of Handsworth Park was celebrated with a Grand Re-Opening Celebration led by Councillor Mike Sharpe, the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, speaking from the restored bandstand at 2.00pm on Saturday 8 July 2006, followed by a count down by a large enthusiastic crowd and the release of clouds of confetti; in the words of one observer "Great wedding! Now we must make the marriage a success."
Lea Hall railway station is situated in the Lea Hall area east of the city of Birmingham, in the West Midlands of England. It has two platforms, one each side of the two running lines, with no points or sidings. The ticket office is on a bridge over the tracks, which are a little below street level. The station, and all trains serving it, are operated by West Midlands Trains. Ramps have been added to permit easy disabled access to both platforms.
Philip Boughton Chatwin was an architect in Birmingham, England.
Midlands 3 West (North) is a level 8 English Rugby Union league and level 3 of the Midlands League, made up of teams from the northern part of the West Midlands region including Shropshire, Staffordshire, parts of Birmingham and the West Midlands and occasionally Cheshire, with home and away matches played throughout the season. When this division began in 1992 it was known as Midlands West 2, until it was split into two regional divisions called Midlands 4 West (North) and Midlands 4 West (South) ahead of the 2000–01 season. Further restructuring of the Midlands leagues ahead of the 2009–10 season, led to the current name of Midlands 3 West (North).
Peter Hollins was a British sculptor operating throughout the 19th century.
Allen Edward Everitt was an English architectural artist and illustrator. He was a leading artist in the Birmingham area between 1850 and 1880, and his work is a valuable historical record of local buildings of that period.
Stephen (Steve) Field RBSA is an English sculptor, muralist and mosaicist, active mainly in the West Midlands, particularly the Black Country, where a number of his works are on public display. He has been resident artist and public art adviser to Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, since 1988, and is a member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, the Contemporary Glass Society and the British Association of Modern Mosaic. He coordinated Dudley's Millennium Sculpture Trail.
Paula Woof is a British artist, best known as a painter, sculptor, muralist, mosaicist and art teacher. She has a number of works of public art, some in her on name and some made collaboratively with other artists, on display in the English Midlands.