Tim Hawkinson (born 1960 in San Francisco, California) is an American artist celebrated for his unconventional and inventive sculptural work that transforms everyday materials into imaginative, often kinetic installations. He earned a BFA from San Jose State University in 1984 and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1989. Hawkinson’s practice spans sculpture, installation, sound, drawing, and video, but he is best known for complex sculptural systems that range in scale from intimate, meticulously crafted objects to monumental, machine-like constructions. His work frequently incorporates elements of the human body, music, and time, as seen in remarkable pieces like Überorgan, a stadium-sized automated bagpipe, and Pentecost, a mechanical tree of tuned tubes with robotic figures. Hawkinson’s deeply imaginative creations explore themes of mortality, nature, mechanics, and consciousness, blending whimsy with structural ingenuity. Over the course of his career he has been the subject of solo exhibitions at major institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and his work has appeared in international surveys such as the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial. In 2015 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his work is part of numerous prominent public and museum collections. Hawkinson lives and works in Los Angeles.