Young Gallery Owner Bucks the Odds
Breaking down boundaries is Detroit Contemporary's goal

As featured in Hour Detroit magazine, July 1999

By Brenna Sanchez

They told him it couldn't be done. Men who'd raised horses for years told him it would be next to impossible, even for someone with experience. But Aaron Timlin went ahead and turned a stallion on his family farm into a gentle riding horse anyway. He was 12 years old.

He got much the same reaction when he decided to open Detroit Contemporary Gallery. The city's art scene can be tough - chronic cynicism, jaded perspectives and small-time scuttlebutt have contributed to the closing of enough Detroit galleries to warrant caution. And "there's no money in it."

Timlin's gallery has been running since last fall.

The 28-year-old comes from beginnings that put creativity and drive ahead of doubt and fear of risk. In 1981, the nine-member Timlin clan moved to rural Clare County, Mich. They spent their first winter - the worst of the decade - in an 8-by-12-foot shack. They had no electricity, living a raw and self-sufficient life, growing and canning and grabbing a chicken or lamb out of the backyard for dinner. Dad Hugh Timlin, a sculptor and former teacher at Center for Creative Studies, and Aaron's mother, a weaver, felt their interests led them to such a life - full of nature and creativity, a Thoreau-style existence. Earlier this year, editors at the Detroit Free Press were hesitant to print Timlin's story - they didn't think it could be true.

His parents believed in letting their kids take their own lead, to learn what they thought they needed at their own pace. One sister had read all the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries by the time she was 8. Aaron was grand-champion sheep shearer of Clare County for four years, made wine and jam and rode horses. He didn't learn to read until he was 13. Each child followed his or her own path.

Aaron, the oldest Timlin child, may have been schooled in farm maintenance and backwoods living, but he gets along fine in the often more-educated-than-thou world of art. He says he's qualified to run a gallery and curate shows because art always has been an integral part of his life. Hugh Timlin was a resource for his children, teaching them to draw, paint and write. "It's been in me since I was born." Aaron Timlin says. "My other credential is that I had an idea, and I went with it. You don't necessarily need a degree to have an idea, to realize the idea.

Timlin didn't know a lot of what it took to get a gallery up and running, but is comfortable with learning along the way. He financed the entire project with credit cards. And he realizes that, unlike him, a lot of people need to see something happen before they'll believe in it.

"In some ways, that is just endemic to Detroit," says MaryAnn Wilkinson, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. "We're our own worst enemies here."

Artist-owned Detroit galleries have faded over the last 10 years, Wilkinson says, and it's important for naysayers to understand the fluidity of any gallery scene. There are always long-term, cornerstone galleries and many that come and go. "That's what shows how vibrant the art scene really is," she says. "It's kind of cyclical," which makes what Timlin's doing now more crucial than what he has or will do.

"There's no way for artists of Aaron's generation to be seen," Wilkinson says. And that's the value of Timlin's vision - "to get some new work out there and show us what that generation is producing. It's really alive."

Says Timlin: "If you really believe in something and really want to make it happen, you're going to try to find any way to do it. People don't understand that sometimes - the willpower of somebody with an idea or a dream or the drive."

It was his sister Rachel's drive to start the gallery with a family art show to cover taxes on the farm. All but one Timlin was involved - it was an evening of Timlin poetry, song, dance, photography, drawing, sculpture, painting.

At the start, Timlin's focus for the gallery was all Detroit, all the time. His first official show was Sight; Sonic, a collection of newer Detroit artists fused with music. In February, he let father Hugh curate, 3d@dc, a show of established Detroit sculptors that featured papa Timlin's old Cass Corridor and CCS cronies, and was well received by a younger set of artists.

But a recent road trip through California and Mexico broadened Aaron Timlin's perspective. He now ultimately wants to get involved in a kind of cultural exchange, bringing in national and international artists in exchange for sending Detroit work out.

"It's good to have a patriotic feeling toward Detroit art, but you've got to take it beyond that," he says. "We don't want to get into a trap where we become exclusive to ourselves and close out the rest of the world.

"I've been taught to take away the boundaries - from state to state, country to country, religious boundaries. We do that in Detroit, too - create boundaries," Timlin says.

Timlin cites examples of the boundaries between CCS, Wayne State and Cranbrook; Cass Corridor and the rest of the Detroit art scene; the established generation and the emerging one.

That sounds lofty, but Timlin knows he'd be foolish to be in it for money.

"This is like my stallion. So many challenges and people, in their different ways trying to buck me off.

"I wasn't going to get bucked off, and I'm not going to get bucked off."