One of the fun things about publishing The Garage is being invited to all sorts of cool automotive events. Never mind that most of them are hundreds, if not thousands of miles away, it’s just neat to know that all this fun automotive stuff is going on and that people want us to cover their events.
It was a really nice surprise a couple of weeks ago to receive an e-mail from Paige Sprecker at the town of Whitby to invite me to the opening of a new show at the Station Gallery by a local artist who creates automotive inspired art. Steven Laurie grew up in Whitby and has long been involved with the Station Gallery. His art is an eclectic mix of backyard mechanic, engineer and performance art.
It is a bit tough to describe Laurie’s work, other than to say he is a gearhead who combines all sorts of mechanical elements to create a machine that does nothing except create mechanical noise or tire smoke. Or shred lawns. In other words, Laurie is sort of a modern day Tim Taylor. Everything has that more power feel to it and the true gearhead will understand each piece, without explanation. At the opening, Laurie fired up the Posi-Track Burnout Machine for guests. A slipping clutch caused a bit of wheel hop early on, but once things heated up, it was all tire smoke and trails of burnt rubber. Very cool!
Gallery after the break
The show also displays the multimedia works of David Carlin, Lori Grace Johnson and Dermot Wilson. Combining photography, sculpture and video, these works incorporate many different textures and intense colours to express an automotive theme.
Perhaps the most simple and least obscure piece for me was the tiny recreation of a drive in theater with it’s little playground at the base of the screen. Just like the ones when I was a kid. Our modern day kids loved the giant shadow box which encourages kids to interact with the set, while a video of them invading the diorama is cast upon the wall.
The show runs from now till July 13 at the Station Gallery
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
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Power to the car (or garage) bloggers of the world! Writing on events rather than press releases is what more folks in the blogosphere should do.