SEWELL ISN'T going to stop with "The Picklecar." He plans eventually to create an entire series of vegetable cars. His next project, though, is going to be the creation of a hot fudge sundae from a 1950 Nash. He also plans to make a big shoe using a 1950 Ford. Sewell says cars of the 1950s lend themselves to his type of work.
Sewell is 32 years old and looks like a strange cross between Abraham Lincoln and Mick Jagger. A graduate of Brazil's National School of Fine Arts, he also attended the University of Minnesota while running an art gallery in Minneapolis that displayed his neck tie designs. He visited California on a vacation once and decided to stay. Sewell's interest didn't run toward gallery art anyway, so once in California he became what he calls "an environmental artist." Now the proprietor of the Venice Flea Market, a Los Angeles head shop, Sewell says what he wants to do with his art is "to open up people's eyes." With "The Picklecar" he has done just that.
Jay Ohrberg is a California pop-artist cum car stylist who challenges Sewell and Paige on their theory that works of art should be driven. He insists that his cars are to be viewed strictly as pieces of gallery art. Like Paige, Ohrberg believes that the cars's sexual symbolism is an appropriate subject for satire, and his "Sex Machine" is an unabashed statement concerning one of the time-honored uses of the automobile. "The Sex Machine's" body is a round bed covered in a plush fur-like red velvet, and sports an overhanging canopy-mirror. The chauffeur sits in hansom coach fashion behind and above the bed so that he can keep his eyes on the road, rather than the passenger compartment--and whatever happens to be going on there.
Even funnier is Ohrberg's "Outhouse Car." A privy on wheels, "The Outhouse Car" has an honest-to-goodness back home outhouse roof. A half-moon back window and a roll of toilet paper between the seats add to the work's mock authenticity. The exterior, almost entirely knotted pine, completes Ohrberg's Pop art statement.
Donn Potts is another artist who feels that cars belong in galleries. In fact, his cars have been on display in The Whitney Museum in New York. The main work, entitled "My First Car," is not so much Pop art as it is modern art. It consists of four sculptural units: "The Basic Chassis" made of wood, "The Master Chassis" made of half-inch steel tubing, and "The Stainless Steel Body" and "The Fabric Steel Body" mounted on dummy chassis. Resembling closely the sleek racers that are present on the drag strips every Sunday, "My First Car" is an exercise in sculptural design.
"MY FIRST CAR" took Potts almost six years to complete and was constructed in large part with tools he made especially for building the units. "The Master Chassis" is the only part of the sculpture with a motor. It is powered by a small, four cylinder engine that is radio controlled. The frame and motor weigh only 460 pounds, and the entire structure is 141 inches long but only 27.5 inches high.
In order to recoup some of his expenses, Potts once attempted to enter "The Master Chassis" in a hot rod show, but his application was turned down because the sculpture didn't fit any of the show's categories.
A professor of Design at Berkeley and a follower of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Potts doesn't view his work as a statement on the cult of the automobile, but rather as a study in form. He also sees it as a way of looking into himself, of developing his abilities as a builder, of heightening his consciousness.
Whether or not the small coterie of artists will radically alter America's concept of the automobile, they have at least made a small dent in modern American art.