By Alexandria Chhith
Murphy News Service
Tim Montgomery, 53, has been keeping himself busy designing and drawing since he graduated from Edina High School in 1978.
“From early on, he volunteered and did anything anyone wanted him to do,” his mother, Donna Montgomery, 78, said. She still has artwork he did as a child hanging on her walls.
Montgomery’s artistic talents can be seen in many places; his political cartoons have been published in newspapers; he was a photography illustrator for the Pioneer Press for 20 years; he co-owns a publishing company, St John’s Publishing, with his mother, and has had many other creative jobs.
You might say it runs in his blood. His entire family, except for one brother, all have some sort of artistic ability. Donna writes poetry, Montgomery’s father wrote a book and the five creative siblings do things from teaching yoga to cutting hair and illustrating the covers of books.
“The oddball of the family is an engineer,” laughed Donna, “[Creativity] must run in the genes, but I don’t know how we had an engineer in the family.”
Montgomery is the oldest of the seven children.
“I gravitated to writing for children because I was the oldest of seven,” Tim said. He said that he liked to make his siblings laugh growing up.
Montgomery has three jobs – one of them drawing fish for “Festival!”, a children’s television show, in River Falls, Wis., where he lives with his wife Piyanud Montgomery, 43, and his three children. The show is broadcast on the cable television station RFC-TV, only available in River Falls and online on the station’s website, http://rfctv.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=c9914027b8e44d6d4fe507f8bbe75af0.
The fish on the television show look similar to those illustrated in his five-book series “A Fish Story.” The fish walk on their fins, closely resemble humans and help interpret moral lessons for children to learn.
Montgomery said the idea of drawing fish started with his love of things Minnesota.
“I wanted the books to have a Minnesota tie. So I thought to myself what do we have a lot of in Minnesota?” he said, “Fish, we have a lot of fish.”
The books are usually sold at grocery stores, airports and gas stations – places adults need to keep children occupied and busy, said Montgomery. Besides the story, there are also games and puzzles for children to complete at the end of each book.
He plans to make more books for the series, but anything new may never see the shelves since the series last distributor went out of business, said Montgomery.
“Illustrating children’s books is Tim’s true passion,” said Donna, “It’s just money and other obstacles that are keeping him from doing it.”
Montgomery’s consistent passion for his work makes his mother proud.
She recalls two of his art teachers who kept his school projects to show future classes.
“They told me, ‘Every art teacher gets, maybe, one student (if they’re lucky) who is extremely talented, and Tim is mine,’” Donna Montgomery said.
Montgomery said encouragement and inspiration from his high school art teacher, Tom Beaver, and his mom helped him develop as an artist.
Montgomery also works at KSTP-TV and does contract work for the University of Minnesota, all while searching for a distributor for his books.
He said he wants to animate more children’s shows and write a children’s book that has a clown as the main character, in addition to expanding his book series.
“I have a lot that I want to do,” Montgomery said, “and I want to aim high and go for the stars.”
Alex Chhith is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.