Grand Portage Ojibwe Direct Descendant

My paintings are representations and my own stories which allow me to share my experiences in nature along the North Shore of Minnesota. My creations serve to share the beauty of the landscape, animal/plant/fish/bird nation members - with a focus on conservation and the steward relationship of the Anishinaabe.

My East coast friends and family flew to visit Minnesota for the MacRostie exhibition a few weeks back. It was their first time in Minnesota, meeting my parents, siblings, seeing Lake Superior, my home and studio, visiting Grand Portage, and Thunder Bay. I wanted to honor their visit in this new piece. While we were driving around Grand Portage late at night, we pulled off - turned off the car lights and stood under the beauty of the Milky Way as it rose. It was such a majestic peaceful evening to watch the stars.

This piece has 257 stars for our collective ages, five pines - one for each who kept me grounded during my time away from home. The makwa guards and cares for the family represented in the fire as embers dance above into the sky. The crane constellation of my own clan is hidden in the night sky.

For years Sam allowed other demands on his time and creativity to prevent him from painting, but with a trip to Alaska and the Northern Yukon Territory, he once again remembered stories that had been shared with him from his grandfather. Upon returning from this trip,he picked up his paint brushes for the first time in 15 years and began to capture these stories in paint. Over the past couple of years, he was inspired to not only paint his family’s stories, but also stories and experiences shared to preserve others' stories too. These current themes of family, larger community, celebration of culture, the beauty of the natural world, and the sharing of stories are universal to each of us for a myriad of reasons.

Sam Zimmerman / Zhaawanoogiizhik After twenty years working in public education, Sam returned home to Minnesota. With his relocation from the East Coast returning to Minnesota, he rededicated himself to his painting with a ferocity that had been absent since his earlier studio days. His work explores his Ojibwe heritage, his learnings and experiences in nature upon his return to the Grand Portage reservation while preserving shared oral histories, reimagining the symbolism of the clan animals while incorporating the natural landscape of Lake Superior's North Shore. Sam focuses on continuing the Anishinaabe tradition of storytelling embedding the themes of environmental stewardship and conservation of the North Shore through his studio and public art commissions. He has completed public art pieces for the Grand Portage tribal nation, Chik Wauk Museum and Nature Center, Voyageur National Park, the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, and the Duluth and Grand Marais communities as a means to celebrate Ojibwe culture and language. He has been the recipient of grant awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Arrowhead Regional Arts Council, Northland Foundation Maada’ookiing, and Duluth Superior Community Foundation. His most recent art coffee table bilingual coffee table book is a collection of paintings and stories from his first year of creating along the northern shore of Lake Superior, titled: Following My Spirit Home, published by Blackbear and Blueberries Publishing in April 2022. Following My Spirit Home was a silver finalist for a Midwest Book Award in June 2023. The Minnesota Historical Society press reprinted Following My Spirit Home as a new paperback edition in June 2023. His work can currently be viewed at Lizzards Gallery and Indigenous First Gallery in Duluth, MN, and Joy and Company in Grand Marais, MN and are in both public and private collections in the United States and abroad.