The Ambiguous Family, part 7

The Ambiguous Family, made from wrecked truck hoods, in the works . . .

The Ambiguous Family, part 2

What raw material is better to depict families under siege than wrecked truck hoods?  One of my favorite locations for sculptural ideas is the local wrecking yard. 

Specifically, older truck hoods are the best to use – they are bigger than those on cars, tend to be flatter (and yield more ‘blank canvas’, so to speak), have less complicated structural reinforcement to work around, and with a little looking you can find ones that have wonderful rust patterns on them. 

I also recommend a trip to the junk yard for anyone debating a car purchase – the vast majority of vehicles there were from Detroit’s drawing boards.  It may be that GM, Ford & Chrysler are overrepresented in the cars on the road (and thus in the junkyards as well), but my own experience owning several says they were intended to last the life of the loan and that’s it.  But, hats off to them for providing raw material for our artistic foolishness.

In contrast, cardboard makes a difficult prototyping material for sculptures this size.  I felt a little guilty for stealing it from the recycling bins, but then again, maybe I’m just participating in re-recycling.