Arnie Zimmerman
Arnie Zimmerman (b. 1954, Poughkeepsie, NY; d. 2021, Hudson, NY) was best known for creating ceramic sculptures that redefined ambition and scale in the field of ceramics. His work, ranging from the monumental to the miniature, from the figurative to the abstract, embodies his fearless exploration of surface, color, and form.
Zimmerman’s work belongs to numerous public collections in the U.S. and abroad including: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; Museum of Art & Design, NYC; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Museum of Art at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence RI; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, Alfred, NY; Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI; Contemporary Art Center, Honolulu, HI; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA; Portland Art Museum, OR; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden; Nacional Museu do Azulejo, Lisbon, Portugal.
For Zimmerman, “clay is the mother of all physical art materials. Humans used it first for utilitarian objects and to express the mysterious connections to the spirit world. They processed it with water, shaped it by hand, dried it in air and made it permanent with fire.” He was a lover of history and the ways in which ceramics can provide a deep connection to humanity as a form of historical record. His lifelong commitment to clay was his continued endeavor to “walk in the truth of the infinite ways humans have used this material.”
Writing on Zimmerman, art historian Judy Collischan, Ph.D. described the artist’s fascination with exaggeration and the bizarre as “reminiscent of the work of Hieronymous Bosch or, at times, Pieter Bruegel. Zimmerman’s impulse is in line with the grotesque, a decorative form of art that intertwines elements from human, animal, and foliage sources. The resultant creatures are interconnected as though caught in a common web of their own growth and existence…they are ugly, yet harmless.” She continues “there is a blend of humor with deformity as these characters seem to clamor and chatter among themselves. Zimmerman combines anthropomorphic form with a moralizing content that relates a lesson about pretense and folly. He epitomizes this ethical passage via a three-dimensional satire."