Jacob Zimmerman “Too Lush” Exhibit Now on Display

Graceland University Adjunct Art Faculty Jacob Zimmerman

Graceland University Adjunct Art Faculty Jacob Zimmerman’s new multimedia exhibit now on display at The Helene Center for the Visual Arts on Graceland’s Lamoni campus touches on diverse topics from his childhood, such as quilting lessons from his grandmother, analog photography and the Delaware River mud of major league baseball fame. The show is on exhibit now in the Constance Gallery through Feb. 14. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The title of the exhibit, “Too Lush Again to Cut,” is a line from a poem by Derk Wynard. “The grass, only last week straw, this week too lush again to cut.” The artist will elaborate on the title and individual exhibit works in an artist’s talk in Carol Hall Wednesday, Feb. 12, at 2 p.m.

Zimmerman, a Maryland native, is in his first year on the Graceland art faculty. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Towson University in Baltimore and an MFA from the University of Delaware. He defines the exhibit as an exploration in material and memory. Items include textiles, found objects, cast gypsum, metals, fiberglass and video.

A distinct item will be a heavy turned bowl made from red oak salvaged from the Philadelphia wood dump. On the inside, he has carved and chiseled deep grooves. He rubbed it to stain and create a patina using mud from the Delaware River region. This is the same mud that major league referees use before every game to rub over two dozen baseballs to give pitchers better control and a firmer grip.

Another highlight of the exhibit is a quilt pieced together with cross-stitch squares. When Zimmerman’s grandmother visited the family from Florida while he was a young child, she taught him how to cross stitch on quilt squares. It took visits over five years for the two of them to do enough squares to make a quilt, but with perseverance, they completed the work that now hangs in his art exhibit.

Zimmerman likes analog photography, using chemically treated film to capture light images, as opposed to the modern digital method. The permanence of the result is one of the features that appeals to him about the darkroom process.

The exhibit is free to the public.