David Zimmer may have left Vienna, Mo., (population 500) some 20 years ago. But childhood pursuits color his work in ways he never could have foreseen.

Tinker with farm machinery? Zimmer loves to build things, from lightboxes to what amounts to ornamental reliquaries for tiny videos.

Collect bugs? Watch birds? Zimmer includes both types in some of his most sophisticated work.

Pick up a camera as the easiest way to venture into art? Zimmer uses the machine behind the most democratic of mediums to experiment with light and motion, and to perform a trick or two.

Zimmer, who has work on view at two art centers here this summer, attended the University of Missouri with an eye on becoming an architect.

"By the time I was a senior, I hated it," he said recently.

"I was very distracted in college. I started taking art classes my junior year, and had a printmaking class with an amazing teacher. I fell in love with her attitude, her creative process. I grew up in a small town. I had never thought of art as a career."

Late on a recent hot afternoon in a room full of art and books - kept cool and dark by a shade made from an old map of the United States - it was as if time has stood still. As if something was a little off kilter. And in the case of some of Zimmer's work, that's just how he wants it.

"Most of my work has some element of nature in it. Part of that is growing up on a farm - the bugs, the roots and branches, the birds. But there is a melancholy feel, too. I'm not a sad person, but my art has a darkness to it."

So how did a degree in environmental design turn into a career in commercial design - he spent four years in Dallas and Seattle working in merchandising and display for Neiman Marcus - followed by this wide range of artwork? (Zimmer has since added marketing and design for a Denver company that makes high-style bird feeders out of recycled glass.)

The hard way, you might say. After graduating in 1988, Zimmer spent a year hanging around school, figuring out what to do with his degree. Then he helped some friends move to Boulder. And stayed. "I fell in love with Colorado."

He and friends such as Alfredo Garc'a-Lucio began to stage outrageous fashion shows and design sets and interiors for clubs such as 23 Parrish and Rock Island. They still work together; Garc'a-Lucio is among the founders of Par-A-Sol, where Zimmer works.

"He'll have an idea and my job is to make it work, or tell him why it won't work," Zimmer said.

What is on view at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Outdoor Arts sums up well the breadth of his work over the years: mini-videos of chirping finches, tiny chairs seemingly suspended in glass containers of crushed blue chalk, lightboxes that occasionally show figures or objects levitating, constructions filled with beautiful insects, and more.

Often, his work is described as photo-based, but that's not totally true. "I never know how to describe it. It started with photography. But I always built stuff. It can be considered sculpture, or somewhere in between. Everything revolves around construction. I seldom do matted prints.

"I'm interested in the photographic process, not working on paper. It needs something more. Photography is definitely magic. It's part art and part chemistry, or it used to be."

His Mamiya RV67, with a fisheye lens, gives him the depth of field he wants. "It has a dream quality." And though he has been working more in digital, "everything has to look old and dirty and messed up."

Attention to detail drew interest from Artyard, where his work is often on view.

"When I choose an artist to show at Artyard," said Artyard owner Peggy Mangold, "several things are considered: work ethic, honesty, passion for the work, brilliant mind and new creative ideas.

"All of these are a part of David's personality. He creates beautiful intellectual works in small format that involve photos, videos and sound."

And some surprises: How does he make his subjects appear to levitate?

"It's a simple in-camera trick. There is no Photoshop. It's like trickery of the eye. That's an awkward way to say it, but it is tricking the eye. If you looked at it another way, you'd know how I do it."

David Zimmer

? Born: Vienna, Mo.

? Age: 42

? Work on view: "Ether: A Ten Year Survey," at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art; participant in "ArchiTEXTure: Reinventing the Book" at the Museum of Outdoor Arts

? Information: Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art: 303-443-2122, www.bmoca.org; Museum of Outdoor Arts: 303-806-0444, moaonline.org

Mary Voelz Chandler is the art and architecture critic. Chandlerm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2677

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