Automotive Fetishism
I would like my work to ideally show the
clean, organized and streamlined appearance of the outer body of a car as well
as show the messy, greasy and not so sterile inner workings of the car. I would like to discover a way to show
both of these opposite attributes of the automobile in my work because this
battle of contradictions is relevant to my life. It is relevant in the way that appearance wise, like a
car, I am sophisticated, but also like a car, inside my head is in disarray. I delved into my inner self, to find my
true reasoning’s for being connected with automobiles. I discovered that it is more than an
interest, it is a fetish, but not in a sexual way, rather an obsession with
something that connects with the way I work as a person. I discovered this “fetish” after
watching Kenneth Anger’s video piece Kustom
Kar Kommandos.
I am addressing the deeper mechanical
relationships and parts that keep the machine running. To most, the inside of a car is a
messy, disgusting, and confusing place.
I am playing with this confusion and general ignorance of the mechanical
part of the car. I started out
doing a lot of research, using eBay Motors, junkyards, the H.A.M.B website and
compiling images of cars dating earlier than 1965 that I would use in my
paintings. I connected these
automotive parts into mechanisms that are not functional. I did this by randomly choosing a part
from my image library, painting it, and continuing that process. I did play with size as well, so not
all parts are life size. I also
kept my compositions linear, moving upwards on the paper. I am also exploring abstraction and
realism as well. How much can
these vehicles components be abstracted and rearranged and still convey
obsession?
As
people, we are constantly searching and surrounding ourselves with people and
things similar to us and the way we think, whether it’s with the friends we
make or how we choose to present ourselves, the similarities connect us to what
we are comfortable with. This is
why you have cliques of people.
They are groups of people with similar interests. I discovered this explanation by
writing lists and brainstorming with my thoughts about my connection with cars. I thought I was just drawn to the car itself,
rather than having a deeper, much different connection. I discovered that I am similar to the
car. I am strong, sophisticated,
and reliable. My appearance is
similar to the 1950s pin up, using appearance as a portrayal of sophisticated self-love.
I am organized chaos. I was once shiny and pure, but through
my twenty-two years of living, metaphorical grit and dirt have been thrown onto
me through abusive relationships and negative experiences and become part of me,
just like a dirt and grit become part of the cars internal “organs”.
Through brainstorming and list writing, I
have been able to come up with a few ways I could show the contradiction with
experimentation with different mediums and paper choice. I started out drawing cars on cardboard
with graphite, pen, and sharpie. I
ruled these methods out because they were still too clean. They didn’t portray the contradiction
in the ways that I was hoping to portray it. I then decided I wanted to be unrestricted, messy and much
different than my usual tight and controlled style. I wanted this because being able to work large and loose, I
would be able to convey the chaotic beauty of cars. I decided this upon the discovery of local artist Daniel
Brown. Daniel Brown paints large
compositions revolving around vintage cars. He calls himself an automotive expressionist. His process is very unrestricted,
starting out with seemingly random color swatches all around the canvas. From there, he continues to apply color
on top of color and weaves the “random” color into a detailed painting of a
car. His work inspired me to
become loose and not be so married to my marks. I spoke with him about his work, and he said “I started out
doing process with a figure painting class. We had to be fast and build from quick sketches,” (Brown). I wanted to make art similar to Brown’s,
whose car portraits portray nostalgia in his expressionist style, but decided
that I should do my own conceptual art rather than straightforward imagery. I decided this because I didn’t want to
give it all away at a glance to my audience. My original idea of doing car portraiture was much too
forward, it gave too much away and it didn’t cause the audience to sit and look,
so I began experimenting with conceptual art, which to me is art that makes you
sit and stare. In a gallery
setting, seeing a painting of a car is easy to walk past, but if I found a way
to conceptualize the car, my audience would take longer to view my piece. I did this because my original idea did
not show the contradiction of messy and clean way I wanted to show it. I did not get that contradictory feel when
looking at a car portrait drawn on wood or Stonehenge. From there, I decided I needed to use
the literal messy inside of a car.
I was quite upset at first, because I get such joy from actually
painting and drawing the straightforward car, but I realized the blood and guts
of the car work better towards my thesis.
I realized that there is a way to marry my ideas.
In order to solidify my imagery, I chose
my materials. I wanted to work
large, be nearly unrestricted for spatial relationships in my mark making, so I
chose large newsprint from the Cincinnati Enquirer and India ink. After I decided on my medium, I
needed to delve into some deeper research of the car parts. To do this, I began by reading car
magazines. I read Automobile Magazine, Auto Trader Classic, and used websites
like The H.A.M.B. and eBay Motors.
I began compiling a library of images of car parts. I used eBay Motors the most, mostly
because I was able to search parts by the make of a car and the year of a car,
which I used to search all cars earlier than 1965. After that, I realized that something that draws me into
cars is the actual act of getting messy and hands on learning. I took two field trips to the Pull and
Pay, where I took pictures of car parts in the cars using my own phone camera
while digging inside the bodies of the cars. I purchased a few small parts that I could touch and hold
while painting. I then asked
several of my friends to allow me to take pictures inside their car garages of
these parts. Many of my friends
donated pictures, including hot rod building legend, Josh Shaw. I was also invited into a friends hot
rod building garage, where I created an image by drawing with tires of 1960
Ford Galaxie 500 two door hardtops, the wheel mounts of a 30 Ford Coup and
other old cars. I did this by
From this idea of large collages, I have
also used the car parts I purchased from the junk yard and dipped them in
ink. After the parts were dipped
in ink, they were rolled on paper for impressions of the parts themselves. By rubbing, dropping and throwing these
messy car parts onto the paper, I began drawing with the parts, getting the
breath and the life from them. I did this as a conceptual shift and to see if I
liked it. After creating about 25
of these images on 8.5 x 11 in paper that I wanted again to go bigger. From there, I covered 22x30 in paper in
these ink droppings of the parts.
I wanted to make sure I was still playing with clean vs messy, so I
began making stencils of a spark plug, which is a very phallic symbol, which in
turn relates to cars, which are considered very masculine. My
idea of learning about these car parts, to master the blood and guts of the
car, relates to understanding the male gender, due do the phallic and masculine
symbolism of the automobile itself.
This idea, of mastering the relationship between the mechanical, masculine power of a car to
the dominating personality of the males who have been in my life, is part of
what drives my art. The automobile
is a world dominated by men, a world that I intend on joining. Being able to dominate this automotive
art symbolizes my personal triumph over the male.
I have also created a piece by using an
entire car. My friend from Dayton,
Steve Fields, invited me into his workspace. There, he helped me attack the paper with parts of all of
the cars he has built. He drove
his 1960 Ford Galaxie 500 two door hardtop over my newsprint paper, getting
vintage tire tracks and leaving an impression. From there, I poured grease from his carburetors, from his
wheels, from just about every part imaginable of a car. Each and every part used in this piece
was from a car dated before 1965, which appeals to my obsession with older
vehicles. I sprayed brake cleaner
on the parts that I had set on my paper, which caused the grease from the part
to move onto the paper. This piece
looks just like the floor of a garage, smelling strongly of cars, motor oil and
grease.
After my exploration of using the
automobile as a drawing tool and being able to smell the car as I worked with
my piece, I decided this part was an integral part of my work. I purchased a tub of wheel bearing
grease, which is a strong smelling lubricant for the bearing of a wheel. This grease is essential for allowing
the wheel to spin around the axel without creating friction and wear on the
axel. I chose to use this
lubricant, as a medium because it’s smell was so strong. I want my work to convey automobiles
without being straightforward, so creating abstractions that smell of cars is
important to me. The lubricant in
the can is clear, so I began testing different ways to color it. I dyed it using gauche and crushed vine
charcoal. This was my first and
only experiment. By combining
these two artist drawing materials, I made the grease look used, grimy, and
gritty. I then tried using my
previously purchased car parts and dropping them on the paper like I had done
with the India ink, but I still was not getting the imagery I was hoping to
get. I experimented again, by just
grabbing some cardboard, putting a glob of the grease on it, and dragging it
along paper. I did this with
sketchbook paper, newsprint, Stonehenge paper, as well as Bristol. This was my most successful and
beautiful experiment. I decided
that because the grease has a warm tone to it, I needed to stick with a cool
toned paper, so I chose the Bristol.
I created a linear composition by dragging grease down a large 22x30in
Bristol board paper. This created
an image similar to a burnout done by a car in a drag race and impressions of
tires. In the middle of bright
almost pristine white paper, a long black grease tread rests. My composition conveys automotive
imagery; alluding to tire tread, without being literal tire tread. It also smells strongly of the wheel
bearing grease, which keeps the appeal of being in the garage and smelling the
cars. This experiment has become
my greatest success with my thesis work and marrying dirt and cleanliness. The grease will never dry on the paper,
which gives the art the feeling of being alive. It will always change, it will always be wet and able to be
moved. My piece will always be
alive, just like my passion and obsession with automobiles.
In my exploration of my thesis, I have
discovered that my work is very much research based. I like to think and brainstorm obsessively before I begin my
work. I will continue to use
grease as my medium and begin to explore the spatial relationship between the
abstract compositions. Thus far,
my grease compositions have been linear.
I would like to make U-turns, curves, large pools, and different patters
using the grease. However I would
like the image to continue to be monumental, keeping the grease image minimal
as opposed to utilizing the entire space.
I will be experimenting with thinning agents, such as brake cleaner, to
see what it will do to the grease imagery. I also plan on doing a composition using metal flake, a
glitter substance that is mixed into a clear paint and sprayed through a paint
gun onto a car to create a glittery, shiny paint, which is very important and
staple in classic car restoration.
To mount this paintings in the final gallery show, I want to continue
with the minimalistic approach and mount directly to the wall. I am going to explore using Mighty
Magnets and also museum tape and see which one creates the best minimalistic
mounting for my work.
My image library is vast, but there is a
junk yard in Dayton that I want to look at that has cars from the 60s to
earlier model cars rather than the newer cars in the Pull and Pay lots. I also want to continue to do little
bits of research by visiting car shops and interviewing my friends who build
cars. I feel like in order for me
to create a successful piece, I need to be able to understand the cars
themselves. I will continue my
visits with my hot-rod building friends, Steve Fields and Josh Shaw and
continue to attempt to master the interior of the car.
My
research based art, using my newly found knowledge of the innards of the
vehicles I have fallen so madly in love with, speaks of passion and grit, much
like the well loved and stained floor of garages. My research has led me into using the car and it’s
interior as a tool for drawing. By
using the car as a tool, I get the breath of the car, its impressions, its
blood. My work ends up smelling
like the car which helps gain the interest of smell as well as sight when
looking at the piece. It is
a marriage of the vehicle and abstraction, while still appealing to my need to
draw.
Works Cited
Brown,
Daniel. "Automotive Fine Art." Automotive
Fine Art. N.p., n.d. Web. Nov. 2012.
<http://www.autoexpressionist.com/>.
Kustom
Kar Kommandos. Dir. Kenneth Anger. 1965. YouTube
McDonough,
Adrienne E. "Adrienne McDonough: My Art." Adrienne McDonough: My Art. N.p., n.d. Web. Nov. 2012.
<http://adriennemcdonoughart.blogspot.com/>.
"New & Used Cars, Trucks,
Motorcycles, Parts, Accessories – EBay Motors." EBay Motors. N.p., n.d. Web. Nov. 2012.
<http://www.ebay.com/motors>.
"The Jalopy Journal." THE HAMB RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. Nov. 2012.
<http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=5>.
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