Starion Bank Gallery
Clear as Mud brings together the work of Annie Lee-Zimerle and Brian Zimerle, two artists whose practices navigate memory, materiality, and the quiet complexities of everyday life to reconsider the promises and contradictions of the American Dream. Drawing from her background in printmaking, book arts, painting, and drawing, Annie Lee-Zimerle creates narrative-driven pieces that reflect on domesticity, cultural mundanity, and her experience growing up between South Korea and the American Midwest. Brian Zimerle’s sculptural ceramics explore the fragility of meaning through replicated objects shaped by memory, history, and material transformation. Together, their work invites viewers to question what is preserved, altered, or lost over time. It offers a layered meditation on belonging, cultural inheritance, and the often-overlooked stories that shape collective identity.
Annie Lee-Zimerle (b. South Korea) Lee-Zimerle received a BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in museums and galleries, and it is part of numerous private and public collections, including the Dayton Metro Library in Dayton, Ohio; Springfield Museum of Art in Ohio; Harold Washington Public Library in Chicago; Joan Flash Artists’ Book Collection; Maine Women Writers Collection; and the Special Collections & Archives at Bowdoin College. Her recent residencies and fellowships include Hewnoaks Artist Residency, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and the Studios at MASS MoCA. She was also featured on The Art Show on PBS. Currently, Lee-Zimerle serves as an Associate Professor of Art and Program Director of the Kate Cheney Chappell Center for Book Arts at the University of Southern Maine.
Brian Zimerle (b. Defiance, OH) holds an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has taught sculpture and ceramics at various universities; he is currently an exhibition technician at the Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Previously, he was the lead mountmaker at the Penn Museum, whose collection greatly influenced his work. Zimerle has exhibited nationally, including at the Emory Art Center, the Springfield Museum of Art, the Zanesville Museum of Art, the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago, and other galleries and institutions. Additionally, he has collaborated with archaeologists, using his ceramic skills to recreate ancient Sumerian beer brewing vessels that were used to produce old recipes, in partnership with the brewmasters at Great Lakes Brewing Company and archaeologists at ISAC.
