Mimi Cummings (1941–2022)

Kalamazoo Artist and Weaver

“Spectral Meander”

As you enter the main stairwell at Central Library, you’ll come face-to-face with “Spectral Meander,” a two-part handwoven tapestry by Kalamazoo artist and weaver Mimi Cummings. This was among several pieces of art that were incorporated into the library building when it was renovated and reopened in 1998. In a Gazette article, then library director Sol Amdursky said the library board “felt strongly about the importance of incorporating art into all library buildings.”

“Most of Cummings’ work is created using natural fibers, and she does much of her own dying. She said the complexity, rhythms and three-dimensional nature have kept her dedicated to the art for so long.”

—Kalamazoo Gazette, 5 June 2008

Mimi had won numerous state and national awards for her work, and was an exhibitor for more than two decades at the KIA’s annual art fair. “Spectral Meander” fit seamlessly with the library’s theme of refracted light and the resulting spectrum of colors.

Miriam (“Mimi”) Zoet Cummings

Born in 1941 in Bellingham, Washington, Miriam (“Mimi”) Zoet Cummings was the second of three daughters of Edna and August Zoet. Her early years were shaped by separation from her parents during the Second World War while her mother was sequestered in a tuberculosis sanatorium and her father served as a field hospital doctor in the South Pacific. In the care of her grandparents and the company of her older sister, she spent the War years in the nearby Dutch community of Lynden.

After the War, Mimi’s father resumed his medical practice in Bellingham and Mimi excelled in the local schools. Her parents’ conviction about the importance of education, including musical training, permeated life in their home. Mimi learned to read music, play the piano and the clarinet, and sing, skills that she applied to musical ensembles and choirs throughout her life. She was also imbued with an appreciation for skilled crafts that she experienced in her father’s horticultural pursuits, a family friend’s pottery studio, and the weaving of the local Lummi Nation.

Mimi enrolled at Harvard in 1959. Upon graduating in 1963 with a degree in History, she joined her fiancé (Charles “Kim” Cummings) in Colombia, where both served as Peace Corps volunteers in the early years of the program. Married late in 1963, she and Kim completed another term of service in Venezuela and returned permanently to the United States in 1967 to attend graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis.

Mimi applied her MAT degree to teach in the St. Louis public schools before “retiring” to raise a family and move to Kalamazoo after Kim took a faculty position at Kalamazoo College in 1972. Demonstrating the progressive and independent streak that characterized her, she elected natural childbirth and breastfeeding with each of her three children.

Mimi also committed to providing her family with healthy and sustainable foods from the family garden and local farms; she canned and froze a variety of fruits and vegetables, brewed beer, and regularly baked large batches of bread. In the same vein, she defied convention by raising her children in a television-free household where reading, instrumental practice, academics, and athletics were prioritized.

As a complement to her dedicated parenting, Mimi developed her career as a handweaver. Self-taught, she first mastered traditional patterns before expanding her craft to rug weaving and designs inspired by the color contrasts of the Pacific Northwest, Native American forms, and theological concepts. Her weaving studio was crowded with looms, brilliant skeins of yarn, and great spools of warping linen.

Over four decades, Mimi was recognized with multiple awards from state and national fiber organizations. She also wove the fine, intricate cloth for her daughters’ wedding dresses and her son’s wedding kilt, all labors of love.

In the course of fifty years in Kalamazoo, Mimi followed current events assiduously and was dedicated to progressive causes. She attended First Presbyterian Church regularly and cherished singing in the choir. In her final years, Mimi and Kim moved to Friendship Village, where they enjoyed the friendship and support of many residents, particularly as her health declined. Mimi Cummings passed away on Thursday, 6 October 2022.