Chattanooga Pulse

R. Michael Wimmer began his career as a landscaper, working in the family business for 25 years and also joining the Navy—but he always wanted to make art. Wimmer fell in love with “stuff” during summers spent in Indiana with his grandmother, a garage sale fanatic.

“She knew what she liked,” Wimmer laughs. “She was a sweet old woman who could talk you out of anything.”

He began collecting antiques and eventually became an antiques dealer. From that, he was inspired to use the “stuff” he found to make sculptural clocks using various materials such as wood, metal, paint, and pottery.

One day, someone came along and wanted to rent his clocks to display alongside Tiffany watches in the store’s windows in Palm Beach. The rest is history. Wimmer realizes that his is a backwards start compared to most artists—selling artwork in the corporate arena and then moving into galleries, but the experience has taught him to value his work and not take anything for granted.

“In the ’90s, selling [my work] was great; there were lots of materials and I could go out and sell 70 percent of what I had in one show,” recalls Wimmer. “Now things have slowed down and this has forced me to do what I wanted to do all along—go out and do shows within a three- to four-hour radius and pursue public art.”

A Florida native, Wimmer came to show his work at the 4Bridges Arts Festival several years ago and fell in love with Chattanooga. “The people of Allied Arts got ahold of me and I moved here.  So many artists live here now; it’s not a small town, it’s not a big town, but everybody knows you. I’m kind of humbled when it comes to my work. I’m still not used to the recognition I get. I just love art; I get enthused by the response.”

While Wimmer is known primarily for his clocks, he believes artists should always be doing something new.  His new show, “Cultural Fragments”, is therefore about 50 percent clocks and 50 percent assemblages and sculptural works. When I ask what was the inspiration for him to make the leap from clocks to sculptural work, he hops up from his seat and says, “Here. I’ll go get it.”

Wimmer returns with a rather odd-looking antique jar. “It’s a memory jar,” he explains. “Young Victorian girls had these. I had it in my antique store. Everything on the jar meant something to the girl, marbles, rings, origami, and they attached the objects on the jar with glue. It’s kind of like a hope chest, except things are glued on to the jar and not placed in it. What intrigued me about this particular jar is that the little girl had painted it gold. Over the years the gold has turned to a beautiful patina. This gave me an idea, and, like with any great idea, I ran with it. The result was my first assemblage ‘Fragmented Woman.’”

The sculptural work in “Cultural Fragments” is largely made up of “found objects”, but Wimmer doesn’t like that category. “The reason I came up with the title ‘Cultural Fragments’ is that people could have passed by these objects for years and years; the pieces are not ‘found objects’ because not everybody would find them.”

Certainly no one finds objects like R. Michael Wimmer. His assemblages are a mixture of young and old, rust and polish, realism and whimsy, and memories from days gone by recognized in the fragments of doll heads, coffee cans, cigar boxes, and mirrors.

“I snatch things out of the hands of decay,” Wimmer enthuses. “I started by saving stuff. You become an antiques dealer when you have collected a big box of junk and you start selling it. And how do you cut the string? By telling yourself ‘If I sell that, I can get something better’ and that’s how you’re able to sell things. It’s the same with my pieces—there will always be better ones. And if you’re not improving, you’re being stagnant.”

“Cultural Fragments: From the Past to the Present Time”
Works by R. Michael Wimmer
Opening reception
Friday, June 26,
6 p.m.
Lookout Mountain Gallery,
3535 Broad Street
(423) 580-8117.
www.lookoutmountaingallery.com