Sims received his M.F.A. in printmaking in 1971 from Ohio University and began teaching lithography and drawing at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. He has also taught at Western Michigan University, Centro de Ensenañza Graficas (Center for the Study of Graphic Arts) in Caracas, Venezuela and Western New Mexico University. In 1978, he left KU to work as an assistant at Landfall Press in Chicago. Sims returned to Lawrence the following year with a number of lithographic stones and a small Fuchs&Lang press. Those tools, along with the support of area artists and friends, prompted him to set up shop at 7 East Seventh Street, where the workshop operated and grew for eighteen years. In 1997 Sims closed the shop in Lawrence and moved the facility to Sunland Park, New Mexico, just outside of El Paso, Texas.

In the Summer of 2001 TLLW made one more final move, to Kansas City, Missouri. This new, permanent, settling place will allow for the kind of future expansion of resources and production capacity not possible at the previous locations.

To date, The Lawrence Lithography Workshop has collaborated with over 120 artists from across the United States. Among them are Ron Adams, Nick Bubash, Paul Brach, Susan Davidoff, Robert Green, Edward Henderson, Peregrine Honig, Tom Huck, Benito Huerta, Gesine Janzen, Luis Jiménez, Elizabeth “Grandma” Layton, Alden Mason, Ed Paschke, Zigmunds Priede, Warren Rosser, Miriam Schapiro, Roger Shimomura, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Robert Stackhouse, Robert Sudlow, Akio Takamori, Theodore Waddell, William Wiley.