Many artists work in a variety of mediums. Kathleen Zimmerman creates drawings, serigraphs and cast sculpture. But many visual artists are also involved with the performing arts and vice versa. While Zimmerman did not pursue music or dance professionally, she did grow up playing the clarinet throughout school and learned to dance as a young adult. We mention this because her love for both these forms of expression can be seen in a couple of her series’ titled Instrument and Dance.
In Zimmerman’s Instrument Series, she began by drawing a related pair of artworks titled Fe and Male. In this piece, she decided to use the innate forms of the guitar and the clarinet to refer to the feminine and masculine anatomy along with abtracted notes and hearts to create a playful harmonious backdrop. These two instruments, the guitar and clarinet, are widely used in American and French romantic music, respectively, so seemed to lend themselves to this sort of interpretation. In these paired images, the basic forms are intended to carry the viewers eyes from one drawing to its counterpart connecting them visually while the textured rendered forms create a similiar visual rhythm that furthers the connection. While creating these drawings, Zimmerman enjoyed the back and forth movement between them so she may continue that way of working throughout the series. We will see as the next drawing or drawings are created. As of right now, drums and flutes have grabbed her attention, so we will see what kind of visual music Zimmerman makes with these two instruments.
Note: Images of the original drawings of Fe and Male are shown above. We will post images of the serigraphs as they come to life. As new work in this series is completed, they will be posted on the drawing page or maybe even in another blog post.
In Zimmerman’s Dance Series, she decided to use different human-made subject matter such as cups, chairs and brooms along with the basic shapes created by the dancers feet as they dance to create the visual homage to these different dances. For Salsa, hot steamy cups of coffee along with a jagged pattern were used to capture the essense of this sexy latin dance with its hip shaking and flamborant movements. For Swing, overlapping tangled limbs of chairs along with a oval pattern were used to capture the essense of this joyful country dance with it back and forth spinning movements. And for Waltz, graceful handmade brooms along with a rounded triangular pattern were used to capture the essence of this refined classical dance with its three step glidding movements. These are the first three in this series but others are bond to follow in their footsteps, as Zimmerman laughingly points out.
Note: Zimmerman did not restrict the drawings to a rectangular format letting the backgroup rendering anchor them on the page but added rectangular blocks of vibrant color to the serigraphs. Both work on different ways to enhance and add meaning to these artworks. Images of the original drawings along with the serigraphic prints are shown above.
While Kathleen Zimmerman has not done any new sculptural work in these themes, her first public commission titled Melody is a good example of her use of the visual arts to express her interest in all the arts. Time will tell if Zimmerman sculpts new work playing off the themes of music and dance.
Zimmerman Fine Art Studio