tdr.design - Timothy Donavan Russell

Being an artist with me means many activities, but my specialties are currently light through glass photos, ink pen and paper craft designs, and music and music videos. Just like with computers, at least for the time being, I feel like I have to make art to survive, so the problem or question for me isn’t what art I should create but rather how. I try to notice the technique. For me it’s all about how the hands make the art, not what they are making or why, really. The what will appear, and the why is anyone’s guess.

At the age of eight, inspired when the Garfield comic strip came to the local newspaper, I began teaching myself to draw by tracing Garfield’s face. Later in childhood I was exposed to live music for many years while my father and uncle were in the popular Central Illinois-area rock band Starry Eye. Even though I’d been more attracted to sounds that droned and sustained like Indian sitars and church organs, the first instruments I would professionally play were the much more accessible drum set and electric guitar. Music very much influences all of my art, since I’m often under the influence of music while I work or I’m actually incorporating it into the work itself.

I earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Illinois State University—with departmental honors—and went on to graduate studies in English, also at ISU, during which time I was a student of Curtis White as well as David Foster Wallace, to whom I once taught basic calculus. My writings and drawings have been published in Druid’s Cave, The Sangamon Star, and by other journals, ‘zines, and websites which I now cannot recall. I co-hosted the comedy radio program The Alleged Show with my brother, Aaron, from 2009 to 2019. An active member of The Pharmacy Gallery & Art Space from 2016 until 2020, my artwork was part of many exhibitions there. I also contributed music, sound effects, and bit part acting to the internet video show The Studio Show.

I enjoy astronomy, Buddhism, technology, mathematics, humor, and most kinds of music.

If you like my designs I'll listen to most any reasonable idea for selling it or for commission work. Thanks for coming! Support the arts!!

My first book, available on Amazon, is a collection of essays much like a music concept album, in that although there are threads between pieces, each of the pieces is distinct.

My 2nd book, also available on Amazon, is a brief though intense treatise which roots the intellectual pursuit of what it means to be stupid deep in layers of metaphysical analysis, over the course mixing the personal with the universal in ways that entertain and defy the conventions of both memoir and philosophy.

Essays on such topics as perception, communication, work, personal taste, and David Foster Wallace.

Several pieces of alt/postmodern fiction from my college days at Illinois State University in the early 90s, during which time I studied under Curtis White.

At long last, I attempt a contemporary interpretation of LEGO "City" toy box covers.

What new books in the fields of cultural studies and critical theory might be on the horizon? Let's find out!

News comes and goes, but what remains is a single unpaired sock at the bottom of the hamper. Seriously, though, these are pieces written for my radio show originally declared on the air to be current news, so just keep that in mind.

Oh, the things we do. Sometimes, they involve drawing a comic strip that puts ninjas in outer space, pitting teen musicians against male bighorn sheep and slimy interstellar frog creatures against our plucky hero.

On the other hand, there are subjects seldom broached in polite society but which should probably be much more, specifically perhaps the one of how funny genital integrity can be.

In the Garfield comic series, Lyman was the original owner of Odie the dog and was also Jon's roommate, but sometime around 1982 he vanished from the series without explanation. Before Lyman was largely forgotten, though, at the age of thirteen I drew these comics detailing the many battles that Garfield and Lyman had with each other behind the scenes.

Every nonsensical, gratuitously violent comic series deserves a sequel, right? Volume 2 even contains a subseries in which the titular characters expand their battle zone to the interplanetary realm.