Joe's Auto Parts

 Joe’s Auto Parts is a site specific found object and mixed media public art sculpture created with pine wood, vintage car parts and barn cupolas reflecting on themes of Midwestern identity and nostalgia, physical labor and tinkering, and creative socio-economic resistance.

Standing along the exterior wall of the NE Sculpture Gallery Factory building within the working field of the Casket Arts Quad, the artist has fashioned a large wooden found car parts sculpture, Joe’s Auto Parts, that echoes an exploratory research outing. The public sculpture stands as requiem to a living rural Minnesota junk yard dealer that specialized in Ford auto parts, one of Minnesota’s first U-pull yards, in business for nearly 60 years, and still working after 80 years of age.

The slotted frame and cubby form reflects a smaller portion of a larger traditional corn crib rack that the industrious entrepreneur modified for car doors, hoods, & fenders. The fifteen cubbies housing 27 car doors and 3 fenders ranging from the years 1953 to 1975, all still retain original elements with their idiosyncratic identifying language scribbled by the auto salvager still visible. Included amongst the sedans, wagons, hardtops, and two and four door parts are the common Ford Fairlane, Fairmont, Falcon, Galaxie 500, LTD, Mustang, Torino, Grand Torino, Mercury Marquis, and more.

The artist first heard of Joe’s Auto Sales via a series of unique recurring ads placed on Facebook marketplace. The phrases, “Joe’s retiring soon!, Over 50 years in business! At age of 80 I’m done!, More than 1000 cars to be crushed!,” and “Saturday 8 am-Noon only!,” were constant within the all-UPPERCASE ads written by Joe’s wife for more than 10 years. These unique ads promoted a form of creative economics and a site of curatorial management that led me to visit with sculptural intrigue.

Next to Joe’s cute farm office stood a large, weathered corncrib-like structure with colorful car parts sticking out from it, like a racking shelving system created with rough sawn wood and nailed with old wedge nails. Growing up in the Midwest, I had always been allured by varying types of hand-built storage structures. Seeing Joe’s parts rack on this initial visit to his thirty-acre U-Pull yard spawned creative process activities: research photographs, observing & learning from an elder still working in the field, rough model making & prototypes, gathering material elements, and laying out structural templates for a forthcoming sculptural project.

Watching Joe orchestrating heavy rusty car parts in the yard with multiple ever-changing field variables and his seat of the pants tinkering dynamics was a clear inspiration. Later, in the studio I drifted thru many concepts and designs. Eventually, the cedar toned white pine base was created in the Casket Arts field laying down, including initial moves to shore up racking, adding side and rear sway braces, interior cupola bracing for the top, laying gravel & flattening footing, aligning & placement within the site, adding 6x6 base skirt with attachments, creating wall supports to cement block, and screwing & shimming among others.

Once the car parts were chosen with Joe at his junk yard, the doors & fenders were hauled to the Casket Arts quad via truck. Each part went through a rigorous cleaning process of debris & hazard removal, rinsing and washing, along with 3 days of initial placement into the curio rack. The middle cupola and car parts were positioned by hand and forklift, while the two 7-foot-tall twin cupolas were hoisted and set with a crane. The sculpture is temporarily sited within the Casket Arts Quad facing south with a 5-degree angle to the Casket Factory building. Rain and snow falls through the cupolas and auto parts, and shadows form on the nearby graffitied architecture.