Biography

Tricia Zimic (b. Long Island, NY) is an American sculptor best known for porcelain works that anthropomorphize animals to explore moral allegory, environmental themes, and human behavior. Her primary body of work, the Sins & Virtues series, consists of fourteen hand-modeled porcelain sculptures of chacma baboons, chosen for their expressive physiognomy and historical precedent in Johann Joachim Kändler’s 18th-century Meissen Monkey Orchestra.

Zimic studied at Parsons School of Design in New York and continued her training in ceramics at the New Jersey Center of Visual Arts, and painting at the Art Students League of New York. She further developed her porcelain practice through research at the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory and the Dresden Porcelain Collection in Germany.

Earlier in her career, she worked as an illustrator and created more than 20 original oil paintings for Troma Entertainment’s cult horror movie posters, including The Toxic Avenger Part III and Surf Nazis Must Die.

Market Records
Original porcelain sculptures from the Sins & Virtues series have sold in the range of $8,000–$12,500 in private sales. In 2022, the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory selected her sculpture Diligence/Kintsugi for reproduction in a limited edition of 25, priced at €12,184 (approximately $13,200) each. Her 1980s oil paintings for Troma Entertainment have sold privately for $6,500–$10,000.

Exhibitions (selected)

• Sins & Virtues, Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ (2023)
• Gallery Blue Door, Baltimore, MD (2022)
• International Porcelain Biennial, Albrechtsburg Castle, Meissen, Germany (2022)
• Essential Life, New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ (2011)
• Wild Urbania, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY (2010)
• Recovery New Jersey: Wild Habitat Renewal, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark, NJ (2010)

Collections
Her work is in collections of the New Jersey State Museum (Trenton, NJ), the Morris Museum (Morristown, NJ), and the Meissen Museum (Meissen, Germany), private collectors in Europe, Asia, Serbia as well as in the United States

Zimic lives and works in Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania.

Sources

• Hunterdon Art Museum exhibition materials, 2023
• Ferrin Contemporary artist documentation, 2021
• Bucks County Herald, “Bucks Artist Tricia Zimic to show at International Porcelain Biennial in Germany,” July 13, 2022
• River Towns Magazine, Summer 2024
• Artist’s professional website and exhibition history

SERIES STATEMENT: Sins & Virtues

When I began the Sins and Virtues sculpture series, I decided to use Chacma baboons to narrate the stories. The animals have expressive faces that can sometimes seem quite lascivious; opposable thumbs that can balance stemware; and, perhaps most importantly, their provenance in porcelain is from MEISSEN’s famous Monkey Orchestra. It does also help that they look wonderful in those 18th c. wide-brimmed, feathered hats. I especially enjoy humorous fables and other narratives that center animals as primary actors in scenes that are, as the viewers know, actually about humans.

The work of German sculptor Johann Joachim Kändler (1706-1775) inspired me to make this series. While visiting both the MEISSEN Porcelain Manufactory and the Dresden Porcelain Collection, I fell in love with both the large and table-sized porcelain animals. These tabletop sculptures were historically made of sugar to entertain guests and stimulate dining conversation. Each of my sculptures are one-of-a-kind and hand-modeled and similarly aim to stimulate conversation. I roughly sculpt out my figure from a sketch and then deconstruct the limbs. I refine the details, hollow out each piece, and reassemble the sculpture prior to a 32-hour firing. Through the development of fine details, the individual personality of each animal and each artwork reveals itself.

After seeing Rembrandt, Franz Hals, and other Dutch masters at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, I painted a painted body of work that compliments and contextualizes my sculptures and can also stand alone.