Tim Hawkinson was born in San Francisco, California in 1960. A graduate of San Jose State University, he later earned his MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1989.
        Hawkinson is renowned for creating complex sculptural systems through surprisingly simple means. His installation "berorgan" a stadium-size, fully automated bagpipe, was pieced together from bits of electrical hardware and several miles of inflated plastic sheeting. The source of inspiration for many of Hawkinson's pieces has been the re-imagining of his own body and what it means to make a self-portrait of this new or fictionalized body. In 1997 the artist created an exacting, two-inch tall skeleton of a bird from his own fingernail parings, and later made a feather and egg from his own hair. Believable even at a close distance, these works reveal Hawkinson's attention to detail as well as his obsession with life, death, and the passage of time.