Wooden floors creak, the sound filling the air in a warehouse packed with discarded antiques. The hundreds of items stacked atop one another seem to be organized in a way that only one man could understand.
Working at a table in the middle of this arranged chaos is R. Michael Wimmer, a contemporary artist who has been creating with “cultural fragments” for the past 18 years.
Wimmer, a 52-year-old resident of Rossville, coined the term “cultural fragments” to describe the weathered antiques that he marries together to form his collage sculptures.
“I like it old. If it’s metal, I like it rusty … that gives character to my work, [using] things that have a past to it,” Wimmer said.
Originally an antiques dealer in Florida, Wimmer began his art career in the 1990s when he felt like the antiques market was drying up.