NAPPANEE —
A Raleigh, N.C. man who was in Nappanee on business was inspired by the mural at McCormick Motors — he admitted the woman depicted in the artwork reminded him of his grandmother.
However the mural had become chipped and worn and Glenn Dorshimer wanted to do something about it. As it turns out, Dorshimer is a furniture designer and transportation artist. He was in Nappanee doing some work for Williamsburg Furniture. But he said he also paints murals, usually about four times a year and has been doing so for about 12 years.
His area of expertise is transportation art — he started by painting for ArTrain U.S.A. — a mobile art gallery based in Ann Arbor, Mich. The theme for the exhibit he worked on was "Romance Transportation" and he said he followed the train across the U.S. for two years.
He studied furniture design and car design in school, so it just seemed natural to offer to restore the car dealership’s mural. Dorshimer contacted Gordon Moore of McCormick Motors and Moore told Dorshimer they did want to restore the mural.
Gordon Moore explained the mural was completed about a decade ago by local artist Jeff Stillson. Moore said the deteriorated state of the mural was mainly due to water intrusion. They wanted to restore the mural and had contacted the original artist at one point. Then Dorshimer happened along.
"He was passing through and had done this sort of work before. He said he’d like to restore the mural so we chatted a while. I took a look at his work and we reached an agreement,"a Moore said.
Moore said the design of the mural was inspired by an original Chevrolet advertisement from the 1920s — the woman with hair peeking out of her hat while she drove came straight from that advertisement. A couple of other elements, like, "The Heartbeat of America" slogan came from other times in Chevrolet’s history.
Moore said Chevrolet will be celebrating 100 years in business later this year and McCormick Motors is celebrating 50 years in business.
Dorshimer shared that he nicknamed the woman "Vivian" after his grandmother.
"She reminds me of my grandma — the picture is from the 1920s or 1930s, and she looked like this," he said.
He’s using a photo of Stillson’s original mural to restore it. He said he power washed the mural and scraped the chipped paint and sealed the area before beginning to repaint. He plans to be done by today because he has another project to work on next week in Lansing, Mich. at the Oldsmobile Museum.
"This is a warm up for me before painting Oldsmobile cars all over the museum," he said.
Glenn said he’d like to do an RV scene mural and a Williamsburg Furniture mural for Nappanee sometime.
"I really like how they (McCormick Motors) brought art into their dealership," he said.
Dorshimer said a future goal of his is to bring art like this into other auto dealerships.
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