Colloquially, formed sheet metal (particularly 18 ga mild steel) is the language of the automobile body, a fixture of classic Americana. In custom car culture, shaping panels with a hammer, a stump, and wheel is a long standing tradition. This is how obsessives and eccentric madmen craft their rolling masterpieces. Legends of American counter-culture, they exist as the wild cousin to large-scale, assembly-line consumer product manufacturing.

I've always admired the great Vanitas Tradition painters for not only their skill, but how they treated their melodramatic subject matter. Heavy handed themes of time and mortality set amidst a collection of everyday things. It can be both poignant for its earnestness and humorous for a lack of subtlety. I attempt to honor that morbid tradition with this set of works.

Metal shaping brings to mind the great hotrod builders of pop culture, no strangers to the dramatic, and the tragedy of untimely death. Skulls, along with beautiful women, flames, speed and destruction are all common themes in the hotrod aesthetic. Motorhead Vanitas.