From Study to tand alone Sculpture

A funny thing happened on the way to designing the model.

I began a layout for the pedestal sized “Boomer’s Nike” and was preparing to model the piece when a friend came by with a sheepish request. It seemed he had this 57 Chevy that he was going to restore in the spring and needed a place to store it for the winter. Holy Schneiky! He had no problem with me pulling molds from it so it was agreed, the Chevy came to my studio. By the spring there was a set of plaster molds of all four corners of the car and details of chrome. These were carefully assembled and laid up in fiberglass to become a full sized sculpture. I got a nice wheel cover, (hub cap in 50’ speak) mold but I wanted a good amount of crush in the tire to indicate weight. This proved to be difficult. Even deflated it takes a lot of weight to squash down a tire. A vice and some pipes made it just right and I got molds of tread and sidewalls from a spare that had never been used , a good early 60s Firestone whitewall.

By summer I was casting a concrete base and the boomer stood seven feet tall. Another friend was getting out of the solid surface counter top business (think Corian) and I bought up his surplus powders and flakes for making castings. Now each piece could have it’s own formula.

There are hours and hours of work to develop a form like this. These times include lots of meditation on what this object is really about. My head spun for months on my teenage years and the meaning of getting my first car, on the adoration of the 57 that I saw in collectors and restorers. My generation has a level of obsession with these machines that is tantamount to worship! We poor resources and attention into this phenomena

Some design friends who saw the Boomer’s Nike made the comment “I could see a whole series of these….” So I began to plan and to consider which cars I should reduce and reconstruct to a goddesses torso, and started hunting for models and toys of classics to do maquette studies. I looked hard at cars and started to think about the their forms and more importantly what these particular designs said about us , and why they had gained their reputations. “Which ones were worthy of Goddess status?”

I so loved constructing something new from the existing classic elements that I had to try a few more. There were many cars from this era that spoke equally strongly.

The row of maquettes grew. http://www.sculpturebytj.com/nikepewterspage

Next time, each car dissected and explored
Thanks,
Tj