This month’s installment of our Staff Spotlight series features long-time Beam Center collaborator, artist, musician and author, Tim Fite. Tim first crossed paths with Beam as an artist in residence for the Window Shop Residency, in a studio at Bergen Street. After completing the residency Tim started working at Beam Center, where he continues to collaborate with different departments, programs, and projects. To name a few, Tim has collaborated in project design, furniture building for our workspaces, program design and planning, and currently he collaborates with the communications department at Beam as a creative peer and artistic eye.

Speaking about his experience working at Beam, Tim says his favorite moment was when he helped build shelves in our Red Hook shop. “I built those [the shelves] with Phillip when he was still pretty young - in high school, and Mitchell,” Tim says. He continued on to say, “I had never built anything super solid before or something that would last forever. When we were done building it, I laid down on one shelf, Phillip laid down on the middle shelf and it was a test [to see if it would hold weight]. There was something so joyful about just being like ‘this can hold the weight of the people who built it and then it might hold the weight of this entire community for a long time.”

When asked what he thinks is special about Beam Center, Tim says, it’s how Beam is an intersection for many things. “It [Beam Center] creates a place and an ethos and an activity that all intersect and then so many parts of our city and so many different parts of our wider community are able to intersect within that intersection and then everybody’s working together and building together and connecting things,” he continues to say. Tim also says what makes Beam even more special is that it is an open space for young people to learn in and grow at their own pace. He says, “I don’t know if I have seen a place or an organization that is as open for young people as Beam is, in all respects. There’s places for young people that focus on specific things and the right kids can get to that place and do the thing that they like to do. But Beam is a place where almost any young person can show up and figure out what they like to do, who they are, and how they can grow. And that part for me is just as astonishing and beautiful and necessary in the world. There is a place where kids could come and figure stuff out without fear of judgment or reprisal. I love that and it’s really unique.”

Outside of his work at Beam, Tim is an artist and an author. Tim says for a long-time he spent a lot of time playing music and traveling the country. “And then I slowed it down so I could be home a little bit more and start taking visual art more seriously and doing a lot of murals, and that somehow morphed into being able to write a kids book,” he continues to say. Tim recently released a children’s book with Simon and Schuster and it’s called A Bucket of Questions. As an artist, Tim is trained in printmaking however, he works with a lot of different mediums. For instance, he draws, paints, designs things, makes music, and sings.