Marc Zimmerman "Green Symphony" Glazed Ceramic Totem, 80 Inches Tall, Deep Green and Gold Glaze, Face Element, Contemporary Art West Coast

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At eighty inches this is among the most imposing works in the totem series, a tall vertical column of hand-built … Read more At eighty inches this is among the most imposing works in the totem series, a tall vertical column of hand-built glazed ceramic elements in deep greens and golds that commands its space with the authority of a standing figure. Zimmerman builds each totem spontaneously, one element giving rise to the next, the composition arriving through an intuitive process rooted in his decades of pottery practice and guided by the same painterly sensibility that defines his canvases. A face element brings a human note to the column, turning what might otherwise be a pure abstract form into something with presence and personality. The green glazes range from mossy and warm to cool and leafy, giving the totem an organic living quality that suits a garden installation as naturally as it suits a generous interior corner. For outdoor placement it will develop a relationship with the surrounding planting over time that no painted work can achieve.

Marc Zimmerman is an American painter and ceramic sculptor based in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. For more than four decades, his work has opened doors into imagined worlds: lush jungles filled with fantastical botanical forms, sun-drenched Mediterranean villages, vibrant florals, and ceramic totems that blend ancient influences with a distinctly contemporary vision. Zimmerman's artistic language was shaped by an unusually varied career. His background as a woodcut printmaker brought compositional clarity and strong graphic structure to his paintings, while the influence of Henri Rousseau and Paul Gauguin inspired his richly imagined landscapes. Time spent living and painting in Kauai, along with extensive travel throughout Mexico and Europe, infused his work with the saturated light, color, and atmosphere that define his celebrated Jungle, Village, and Tropical Floral series.

In recent years, Zimmerman returned to his earliest passion, clay, creating his Garden Totem series from hand-sculpted and individually glazed ceramic elements stacked into spontaneous vertical compositions. Rooted in his pottery experience in Venice Beach during the 1960s and 70s, these works bring the same exuberance, movement, and inventive use of color found throughout his paintings into three-dimensional form. His work is represented by galleries in California, Florida, and New York, and is held in private collections throughout the United States and internationally. See less