Let’s Talk 10: Timothy Walter
Illustration by Kiara Sanders
Durham Fruit & Produce Co. is a creative playground in a renovated warehouse hosting gallery exhibitions, residencies, and all things performing arts. Owner Tim Walter transformed The Fruit into a studio & performance venue spotlighting emerging creative talent in and around Durham as well as world class artists.
Tim said:
Favorite fruit? Blood orange, broken open, juice dribbling down the chin of a lover, preferably on a spring day in Rome.
Your greatest accomplishment? Oh bite me! It’s probably work I did with refugees and farmworkers when I was 25.
What’s your vice, or what do you struggle with? Puppies. Nutella. Photographers with genius for composition. Brilliant colorists. Bernini. Michael Stipe’s timbre.
What do you think there was before the Big Bang? If this is ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ I think humans are too limited to picture that, but I hope there’s an afterlife that enables us to do so. And, if this is about how matter can be compressed into something small, as son of a nuclear physicist, I once got dinner party guests working together to calculate the empty volume of an atom. It turns out atoms are mostly empty space between the nucleus and the circling electrons. If for example you put a ping pong ball on a football field 50-yard line, and place a housefly on the goal line - that space represents your radius! And it becomes easier to imagine how “stuff" maybe can be squished really small.
Top 3 positive moments of 2020? Number one: rediscovering Nutella. Two, a dozen friends of The Fruit put up almost a million dollars in loans to save it from foreclosure when no local or federal initiatives were there to help us, and third, new awakening - I’ve encountered quite a few angels, but also seen up close profiteers, the apathetic, the miserly, and leaders who feigned powerlessness. And I’m waking to trauma and marveling how millions of people who lost loved ones aren’t erupting in bitterness and anger.
How do you make time for yourself? Immersing myself in a photo shoot with a captivating subject.
What quality do you value in a friend? Loyalty.
Have you gained a quarantine hobby? Learning how to grill steak and yellowfin tuna rare.
Coffee or Tea? I relish both, with honey, but I crave coffee.
What is love? Having your heart torn from your chest so you might as well die, but still wanting what’s best for the other.
It’s Good For You.