A Collage of Art and Law

Found objects inspire the works of one of the state’s assistant AGs.Lawyers and artists may seem to lie on opposite sides of the vocational spectrum, but for N.H. Assistant Attorney General Jason Reimers it’s a winning combination. “I couldn’t be happier,” he says. “I love my day job, and I don’t have a TV so I still have time to make art.”You might guess that the wooden collages currently hanging in the New Hampshire Antique Co-op in Milford were done by a lawyer – someone attracted to organization and structure. “There’s a creative side to lawyering,” he says. “And in the pieces I make there’s a lot of order. That’s a similarity.”Reimers has been making new structures out of what other people might consider to be junk since he started college in 1993, but it wasn’t until he started working with wire in 1998 that his habit became a more serious exploration of artistic possibility. “I’m not sure I’d call the early stuff art,” he laughs. His art education was more natural evolution than formal study. “I never took an art class. I did take an art history class in my freshman year at college, but I think I dropped out of it.”Reimers’ current collages are assembled mostly from wooden parts and pieces he’s picked up from as close by as his own backyard in Goffstown and as far away as the other side of the world. Pieces of an old window lie adjacent to parts of an old table; an old barn wall contrasts with the sides of a wooden box. The effect is both visually soothing and intellectually inspiring.Part of Reimers’ artistic vision has to do with the stories behind those parts. “Generally it’s the story that first brings me to the object, but when I’m actually assembling the piece it’s more about how things go together visually,” he says. “You know this stuff has seen history.”