The Awards Collective was created to feature the works of artist who have received either a Juror’s Award or Director’s Award in ASG’s Online exhibitions.  Tim Christensen’s image Rosalia lameerei received the Directors’ Award in the art + science exhibition juried by Linda Alterwitz.  Tim’s exhibition Neotype is discussed in this GalleryTalk.

Artist Statement

Neotype:
Definition: a specimen designated as the defining specimen for a species that replaces a preexisting “type” specimen that has been lost or destroyed.

Before I grew tall enough to clearly see the ground benign neglect was the open-ended algorithm that shaped my interactions with the natural world. Out of the house away from the cries of my younger siblings I’d roam. Climbing fences, opening closed doors, peering down abandoned wells, spelunking the irrigation pipes running under the road, poking at dead carcasses, and stuffing overalls with my finds. More than once my collections were thrown away. I still feel the loss of some of those things. Insignificant to adults but full of meaning and curiosity for a child brought up on benign neglect.

I’m older now, a scientist but also an artist. Still collecting insects. I see how our invention of chemistry has decimated the natural world and deprived us of our insect companions. I ask myself what I am missing with my trained eye as I walk through the woods. I know that science is not the way we remember it is only the way we document, these are not the same. With all this swirling in my mind I create my artistic practice. Borrowing the now ancient chemistry of early photography and merging it with modern digital techniques I capture my insects so that I will remember them. I seek to create a ritual of engagement with my work that evokes the sense of wonder I felt as a child as I conversed with the insects but comments on the way science puts the living world in boxes. It seeks a new way of knowing by creating a conversation between wonder and reductionism. A conversation between the past and the future of these disappearing creatures of wonder.

Each of my works starts with an insect I’ve collected and carefully preserved. As a scientist I wonder at the beauty of these specimens as I focus up and down under the microscope creating a complete image in my mind of the whole insect. To share this image with you I take thousands of frames of each insect and create a super resolution digital composite. Insects are not digital. Converting the digital back into the analog I use the old process of wet plate collodion. Chemistry swirls and takes on a life of its own that results in a one-of-a-kind object that celebrates and remembers insects.

Tim Christensen, Ph.D., MFA
September, 2025

Bio

Tim Christensen finds inspiration in the nature surrounding him in North Carolina. He has a deep passion for all the life around him. This compelled him to get my Ph.D. in Genetics from Cornell and become a Biology professor at East Carolina University. He balances the preciseness of his scientific training with the handmade qualities of historical photographic techniques to create compelling images of the small things we often overlook.

website: twchristensen.com
instagram:  @photograhy_twc

link to online exhibition