red road studio : Creative Interviews : Timor Cohen aka Timohandmade

10 September 2011

Creative Interviews : Timor Cohen aka Timohandmade

By coincidence I'm in Israel again chatting with Timor Cohen who's 31 and lives in Jaffa, Israel. It’s a port city and the port itself is a only a few minutes walk from her house. She studied painting in a master class in Israel and Italy.

Her home is also her studio, and is now her main source of livelihood, though she sometimes does some design work for others and still manages to teach painting one day a week. Ok Timor, over to you with your answers ...

How would you describe yourself in five words

Open Curious Moody Routine-less Creative

Give me the names of 3 objects or things you dislike most and why

1. Bananas (it's obvious why)
2. Bureaucracy (paperwork, bills, numbers, binders and reports do not do me any good)
3. Intolerance, unnecessary suffering

Tell me about something you've achieved

Upon reading this question, two answers immediately came to mind:
I have ADHD, and while it has many positive aspects, one of the negative ones was difficulty reading and writing. It took a lot of work to overcome it in Hebrew (today I'm addicted to the written word). but in the world today it is very difficult to "survive" without knowing to read and write well aspecialy in English… As I’m writing this I understand that recently I rather mastered this second language (as such), and even though it takes forever to answer each question, it’s still an achievement :)

The other achievement is the ability to make a living from something that interests me and that I love doing.

What’s your ideal working day

I rarely have an ideal working day, but my fantasy working day is one that has a number of hours devoted to painting and a number of hours devoted to working on the dolls in my workshop, and also leave me enough time to visit the sea, Time to be with my loved ones, do something spontaneous – the list goes on (as does this imagined day). Meanwhile, I'm satisfied if I manage to achieve half of what I aimed for in my list of tasks.

Who influences you creatively

It’s difficult to answer who influenced my creativity because so many people inspire me and so many things stimulate my eyes, that I do not exactly know… But I think that my mother (who is a carpenter and a most creative person,www.studiopaam.co.il/) sure has paved the way first (from infancy). She taught me not to fear any material or any creative idea. With that knowledge as my starting point, all is possible and inspiring

Are you usually late, early or right on time

I'm always early (for many hours of my life I stood in front of closed doors). Even when I try to arrive fashionably late, I fail (it’s something in the genes)

How do you start a new piece of work?

New projects always start from the material. It is the materials that stimulate the need to play with them and assemble them into something new. Besides that I haven’t established a routine. Each project and/or new design asks for somewhere different from me and from my work environment.

Where would you like to go in the world for inspiration

The truth is that anywhere in the world intrigues and inspires me, because any place has its own qualities, but if I must choose, then something from wild nature to metropolitan area in the far East

What piece of work are you most proud of

Right now I'm pleased of my "Family dolls" line, because they are different characters that can be put together as families. They come in all skin tones and all ages and genders, so that people can assemble any family they please. I really like to see how they are being bought for every family model that you can possibly think of (two men and a baby, a single mom and twins, a family that consists of a grandmother, a brother and a sister, or of a father dark-skinned Chinese mother and three children, and sometimes even simply a “common” family with uncles, neighbors and a dog.) sometimes people write me asking for very special families, and it’s a delight to see what a variety of shapes and colors there are for love in the reality of a modern family.

What would you like to develop further or learn to do

I want to develop all sorts of things, perhaps more toward art and less toward the craft (even though it's a very fine line). I want to do more of the developing and designing and less of the producing.
I guess I still have a lot to learn about balancing creativity, income, values and quality.
I would also love to learn printing techniques and how to drive a scooter, study Arabic, and the list goes on…

What's your favourite food, music, movie or book

I love a huge variety of all (from classics to the highly esoteric).

Who do you think I should interview next

There are lots of talented artists that I’d love for you to interview, and I chose someone I do not actually know: I came across her in ETSY and immediately fell in love with her creations and her abstract way of thinking.