Elements of the Art Installation

Photographs by DIANA SANCHEZ

Diana’s capability of capturing and representing the warm and playful sociality of the auto shop comes from her way of working with Speed and other mechanics. Diana spent weeks getting to know Speed, Ralus, John, Tom, and other regulars at Enthusiast Automotive before she started taking their photographs. She made connections with the mechanics and found ways to relate to them by the little conversations with photos in between the moments she spoke with them.

Video by DAVON RAMOS

Davon’s poignant video portrait of Speed draws on his strength as a considerate cameraman and as an astute interviewer. As he was filming, Davon was careful not to overburden the mechanics working on cars. His filming style represents a dignified approach that is not always inherent in the mere act of pointing a video camera. His compelling questions drew an eloquent and poetic story from the mechanics about their lives in the East Bay. Currently, Davon is working on video portraits of Ralus Rogers and John Terry.

Paintings and Drawings by DANIEL GALLEGOS

Daniel contributed a series of watercolor drawings and oil paintings that he had done over the course of his two-year interaction with Enthusiast Automotive and its surrounding neighborhood. Daniel’s artworks convey his interest in social and material relationships between buildings, cars, car parts and people. He expressed the aesthetic and affective qualities of working on classic cars.

Sculpture by JAMES CROSBY

For James, the work in which the Enthusiast Automotive mechanics were engaged was familiar on many different levels, including the fact that both were creatively recycling old car parts. As his contribution to the installation, James offered a piece produced from Ralus’s old car parts. His gesture of making a heart out of old tires was poetic, touching, and wildly popular among many visitors attending the show.

Texts by Zhanara Nauruzbayeva and Daniel Gallegos

Along with these artworks, we have featured short meditative pieces on the Enthusiast Automotive auto shop.

“Maintaining Used Cars in the Age of Disposable Products”

“Restoration of Automobiles as Art Form”

“Community-oriented Commerce”

We have also displayed a photo installation of Speed’s portfolio.

Art Exhibit inside the Auto Shop

On July 23, 2011, we had an opening for the “Diagnostics” art exhibit at Enthusiast Automotive. Installing and displaying the artworks inside the auto shop has been part of our method. Not only have we created artworks in collaboration with Speed and other mechanics but we have also installed artworks directly inside the social and material environment on which they were drawing. In this way, Davon Ramos’s video was projected inside the garage, right next to the work spaces for fixing cars. Visitors could simultaneously see the sculpture, paintings and photographs, and smell the oil, gasoline and rusting metal. Along with viewing the installation, visitors could see the cars and ask questions from Speed and Ralus. Frank played music inspired by car culture. One can hear the sounds of the shop while viewing the very art that was inspired by the mechanics. All these elements were part of one giant installation. A number of people came from the surrounding neighborhood. Tiffany who lived across the street from the workshop shared her stories of Speed always calling and warning her about street cleaning days and thus saving her from expensive parking tickets. She brought along her 8-year-old son, Miles, and her mother.

The exhibit is available for viewings (Mon-Fri) at the auto shop for the next few months.

Invitation for Art Show

We’re having a art show/presentation for the work with Speed and his crew down at the shop. There’s an office space in the garage that we’re currently converting into a gallery space. We’ll also have a little barbecue to hang out and talk about the project.

The location of Speed’s Enthusiast Automotive is 5920 Adeline Street Oakland, California on Saturday July 23rd at 4pm.

Cleaning as Part of Artistic Interaction

Yesterday, Daniel and I went to the autoshop to clean the exhibition space after Speed’s nephew repainted it. The space looked great. We brought cleaning supplies, rags, and a bucket. In the process of washing the windows and mopping the floors, I caught myself remembering how we went through the same procedure in every one of our previous projects. In our Almaty project, we inhabited and transformed the exhibition space at the new building of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art by cleaning and adopting it for our purpose.

Similarly, in our “Borrowed Kazan” project in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, we spent the whole day cleaning our street café space. We washed the windows, tables, and shelves; dusted walls and cleared cobwebs, painted shelves, and cleaned the floors. I remember how all the surrounding vendors were watching us clean with curiosity. To observe how the seemingly distant foreigners and potentially frivolous artists were engaged in the most mundane and possibly gendered labor of cleaning could have been an unusual sight. Moreover, for some, this was a moment of endearment. The neighbor who was selling peppers and making pepper mixes nodded his head several times with approval. Others periodically came by the space and watched us engage in cleaning yet another segment. One woman pointed to one area that we missed. In hindsight, I consider this act of cleaning as important as the rest of our artistic interaction with the vendors and passerby in the project. This practice enabled our neighbors to see our project as something familiar and recognizable; something that they can relate to and intervene in. The act of cleaning brought us into the same space as collaborators. We were no longer foreign and outsider.

Speed checked in when we were halfway through. He apologized for not having a mop; his nephew had borrowed it and did not return it yet. Daniel and I laughed saying that washing floors without a mop is a good exercise.

Art Gallery

Yesterday was another busy day. My friend Devin who is an electrician that will help out with the installation of lights. I’m trying to figure out how to make this space into a gallery for one night as a way of sharing with our community, friends, neighbors, and mechanics.

Speed has a nephew who finished up the painting of the gallery space and it looks great. Speed keeps saying that he has to paint this space and seal it up because the rain gets into the walls because they are made of cement. Judging on how rainy it was this last winter I’m sure a lot of the damage that happened in the office space/gallery space came from this season.

Speed was working on cleaning up and re-painting some early 60′s/pre-60′s Porsche engine parts. He showed us some of the parts. They looked beautiful. I imagine all of these parts were hand machined and you can tell the Porsche company really cared about the quality of their parts.

Later on that afternoon I went back to finishing up some work on a painting that I’m working on. The painting is an auto part and I’ve been trying to figure out how to make it look like something mechanical. I dropped in some dark outlines to make it look more detailed and to keep in mind while I work on the painting where the parts are located when I’m painting in the color. I have to work fast because time is running out.

Later Monica came over and we had a talk over beer about how we’ll put some pictures together for an installation of Speed’s work. I haven’t quite figured this out but we are working on something that we think will look interesting to view on a wall.

Later in the afternoon James and I went to meet with Ralus at the San Pablo Flea Market up on 61st Street to discuss how they will work on a sculpture together. Ralus was meeting with the guy who runs the place to discuss problems with his diesel engine. Ralus had problems all day and he talked about how he broke a bolt on a BMW part and it stressed him out because it would cost a lot of money to fix. Later the problem was solved because the parts were able to be taken back free of charge. We had a long talk with Ralus about his ideas with working together on a sculpture.He had many ideas. Ralus then offered some engine parts to James for the sculpture.

Afterwards we talked a little bit about the neighborhood we were standing in. A lot of old houses still stand in this neighborhod. This area was a different town before the city of Oakland had the town incorporated into a neighborhood. Ralus says that he knew an old lady in the neighborhood who was one of the first African Americans to own property here and his friend was related to her. He also pointed out that there was and still may be a big white house in the neighborhood that was the original farm house to this tract of land. Ralus says that his friend remembers that his family told him that all of the neighborhood west of San Pablo used to be staging area for cattle in the old days and that none of the houses were there.It’s always really nice to hear this tidbits of history with Ralus.

Material Reality

Today is the 5th of July and I took Matthew and Frank to meet the guys down at the shop. Ralus and Speed were standing at the gate and we took a little time to talk about the 4th of July holiday. We also talked a little bit about how we’ll put together the gallery space. We measured the space to figure out where to put track lighting and thought of some ways to present Davon Ramos’ video work.
A beautiful convertible 1966 Thunderbird pulled up and the guy who was driving it talked to Speed for a bit. I think he had Speed look at it for a problem.
Speed told me that the auto shop was a gas station at one time and it served a different kind of purpose to the neighborhood earlier in the 20th century. The gas station closed down and later it was an auto shop before Speed took over.
Wandering around the place I always find little elements of the earlier time in this shop. It must have served a lot more people in the old days because it has two bathrooms with signs clearly stating that they’re women and men’s bathrooms.
Another tell tale feature that the space served many more people is that it has a built in water fountain. The fountain still works but the drain has a little leak on it. I’m not sure anyone still uses it but it does look really charming. I really love the metal paper towel dispenser with the hand crank and the old top loading borax dispenser.

On Collaboration

When we started talking to Speed about the upcoming exhibit, he said that he already started working on repairing the space for the exhibition. We proceeded to the room, and he showed us the progress that has been done on the space. He was fixing the walls that had been water damaged and repainting them. Daniel and I said that we could start helping with preparing the space too. With Daniel finishing work and me filing the dissertation, we could now engage with the project full-time. We agreed that we would meet after July 4^th.

One of the experiments of this project has been to develop meaningful ways of working together with Speed and other mechanics. Daniel said that it was his personal challenge to figure out how to work out an artwork where he could work together with Speed. One of his ideas was to have a painting that looked kind of like the body of a car that is being sanded and repainted. When he shared this idea with Speed, Speed deliberated and responded “You may be overthinking it.” Instead, he suggested something simpler. Speed said that over the years he had been documenting his body work. He wondered if the final project between them could draw on this collection of images.

–Zhanara