Born in Connellsville, Pennsylvania in 1934, Zimmerman’s family moved to Chicago when he was eight years old. He began formal art lessons at the age of eleven at the Chicago Art Institute, and for several years attended the Institute’s classes in drawing and pastel composition held in the Field Museum of Natural History. This focus on art continued through high school with summer courses at the Chicago Art Institute, and then at Cornell College, Iowa, where he majored in art, with minors in English and philosophy. Zimmerman graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell College in 1956, and then he completed a Masters in Fine Arts degree in painting and design from the University of Iowa in 1958. The next twelve years were spent teaching drawing, painting, and design at Berea College in Kentucky. It was at Berea College that the interest in relief printmaking became Zimmerman’s dominant focus of artistic expression. It was also during this period that the artist realized that spending twenty-eight contact hours a week teaching art in the classroom was draining too much of the energy needed for his own work. Zimmerman went back to school on a full scholarship, and he received the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Art History from Syracuse University in 1970, where he was teaching full time as a Visiting Professor. Since Syracuse University does not hire its own graduates, the artist selected a position at the State University of New York, Cortland from several teaching opportunities, because he was guaranteed his own studio. The switch from teaching studio art to teaching art history and appreciation was as beneficial to his artistic production as he had anticipated. Zimmerman continued to exhibit in competitive exhibitions and one-man shows throughout his teaching career. He retired as Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at SUNY Cortland, and was awarded the title Professor Emeritus.

     This catalogue is Zimmerman’s first effort to market his work. Teaching provided the economic necessities of life, and allowed absolute personal control over an extremely subjective body of subject matter, media, and forms of visual expression. While his work includes oil paintings, watercolors, and sculpture, the focus of his work for the past forty years has been woodcut prints. While most woodcut prints begin with a drawing of the composition, instead, Zimmerman draws in a small area directly on the block, and immediately begins cutting out the background areas. The composition then grows out of an interaction between the artist, the demands of the wood, and the evolving composition. The final composition is always as much of a surprise to the artist as it is intriguing to the viewer. It is this sensual interaction–between the grain of the wood, the feel of the cutting knives and gouges, and the intuitive subconscious direction which determines the ultimate form of the composition–that has addicted Zimmerman to the woodcut media.