Posted on Monday, January 12, 2009 | By Linda Smoker | 0 Comments

QUILT#101 - Spotlight on Ricky Tims

Ricky Tims

Cowboy Quilter in Tune with the World

By:  Cynthia Van Hazinga

If we had to choose one word to sum up Ricky Tims, it would be creative. The man has boundless energy, an astonishing range of interests, and creativity to beat the band. When I first started learning about him, I was amazed, for his skills and accomplishments go on and on.

“It was born inside of me,” Ricky says, meaning his music, his quilting, and all his artistic imagination. He definitely comes from a musical family: “My mother’s side of the family are all musicians,” he says, “whether it’s the piano, fiddle, mandolin, accordion or guitar. All very grass roots, and we loved to play together.” Ricky tuned in very early, according to a treasured family video of him at 21 months, poaching his cousin Carolyn’s toy piano from under the Christmas tree, and leaving her his new rocking horse.

Thinks like an Artist

Ricky clearly loves music, and listens to a lot of classical music. He specially loves cinema music; when he goes to a movie, he gets into the soundtrack as deeply as the moving images, and “my creative brain dissects a movie,” understanding it on many planes, “like crazy.” He’s analytical, can play by ear, was “reading music before I knew the alphabet,” and he’s loved to conduct since the age of 10.

“Sacred Age,” Ricky’s newest recording, featuring solo piano infused with Native American instruments, string orchestra and vocal orchestrations, was created to suggest the beauty and majesty of the Spanish Peaks region of Southern Colorado.

Ricky’s famous for his impeccable, artistic quilts, but he’s always reaching onward. After a recent trip to Japan, where he took lots of photographs, he has “a desire to incorporate my photographic skills with quilting. It’s a new creative path for me.” On his most recent teaching trip, a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Amazon, Macchu Pichu in Peru, and the Galapagos Islands, with 30 people, he took more than 7,000 pictures, and is itching to work on photomontage and printing on fabric for new effects. “I’m more and more interested in digital quilts,” he says.

Teachers and Students

Quilters are generous people, and most are eager to pass along what they know. Tims was strongly influenced by Caryl Bryer Fallert, and adores her hand-dyed fabrics. He’s been dyeing and selling fabrics since 1995. For him, it’s “creating color.” He likes to get involved in every step of the process, though, “I’m not going to grow cotton,” he jokes. (He also designs fabrics for Red Rooster.)

The atmosphere and imagery of the American Southwest has “totally captivated” Tims’s spirit. “I love the old spirits,” he says, “and the art of aborigines, Native Americans, Alaskans.” He also admires the symbolic, mystical paintings of Santa Fe artist Frank Howell.

And then there’s teaching, passing it on. “I truly believe that I have been gifted by God,” he says, “and I feel a great responsibility to share my gifts.” Annually, he holds about 12, five-day La Veta Quilt Retreats and three Ricky Tims Super Quilt Seminars for 500-700 enthusiastic quilters.

“Teaching,” he says “is a way to inspire people, to get their spirits to sing. Quilting is a journey, a diary of life. You learn what you never dreamed you could do, and have a project that expresses who you are and what your life was. It’s very powerful.”

A Quilting Gene?

In another incredible expression of family heritage—apparently it works both ways—Ricky’s dad, now 81, became a quilter in the same week Ricky did, in 1991. “My dad’s a hard-working man, and he always loved to put things together. I called him to tell him I was making a quilt on Granny’s old Kenmore, and he surprised me by telling me that was just what he was doing!” Neither knew what the other was up to. “For the last 18 months, he has been quilting away,” Ricky marvels, “he’s determined to make a quilt for every one of his grandkids and great-grandkids.”

Another growing part of Ricky’s life is his web-based TV show (The Quilt Show) with co-host Alex Anderson at www.thequiltshow.com. (He also has a jazzy website: rickytims.com) “It’s a creative way to build a global online quilt guild,” he explains. For the three-day Super Seminars, Alex Anderson and Libby Lehman help him out. Both are funny and add live production videos, comedy and music. It’s more fun than you could imagine, and some participants say as useful as 20 years of quilting alone.

A Real Right-Brainer

I was beginning to think that Ricky Tims might be a saint, so I asked him if he has any problems or weaknesses. Sure enough, like the rest of us right-brainers, Ricky has trouble with organization, and depends on his staff to light fires under him. “Follow-through is difficult for me,” he admits, “I’m so engaged in creativity, I tend to put off mundane things. I can’t meet a deadline, ‘cause my brain never shuts down. I know what I should be doing, and have every intention of going through the piles on my desk, but…it’s not all glamour to be creative. Fortunately, I can delegate and stay focused on the things I do best.”

In essence, Tims explains, “I love to work improvisationally, fly by the seat of my pants, but at the end, I want it precise and refined. I like to work fast and not worry about future decisions until they have to be made. When I start to design a quilt, I don’t know what color it will be, or design, or what will be appliquéd.”

Now that’s a creative brain. And it sounds like his workers and neighbors in the tiny Colorado mountain town of La Veta, pop. 934, are just as willing as the rest of us fans to cut him all the slack he needs. La Veta is his dream community, he says, but he’s planning a bigger house, with room for quilting guests, on a gorgeous piece of property in the mountains near La Veta. Somehow, we’re sure this dream, too, will come true.

Tags: Ricky Tim, Spotlight on Designer