Schimert was born in 1963 in Grand Island, New York, a town northwest of Buffalo overlooking Lake Erie.Butler, Cornelia H. The Power of Suggestion: Narrative and Notation in Contemporary Drawing, Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1996. Retrieved April 20, 2021. She studied sculpture at Philadelphia College of Art (BA, 1985), while also developing interests in performance and writing.Artner, Alan G. "She's So Literary," Chicago Tribune, March 16, 1997, Sect. 7, p. 6. After graduating, she moved to New York City, where she worked as a studio assistant to artist Allan McCollum and joined the performance company, Bricolage, as a costume/set designer and performer in reworkings of Les Liaisons dangereuses and Dracula.Fisher, Eileen. "Legend as Real Life, History as Theater," High Performance, Issue #32, 1985, p. 88–9.Keating, Douglas J. "Theater: Dracula's tale retold," The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 17, 1986.Sheffler, David A. "A 'Quartet' of blood," After Dark, October 1, 1986. After enrolling at Yale University (MFA, 1989) to study sculpture, she continued to make forays into other media, including photography and drawing.Rhode Island School of Design. Katy Schimert, Faculty. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
