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.

Yet, to the unacquainted, set the two side by side in a field and both would simply be described as “cars”.

Growing up, I obsessed over cars of all kinds, and dreamt of one day shaping them. I drew them over and over and over, until one day I simply got bored, and consequently gave up that adolescent dream. Why?

Through much reflection since, I've zeroed in on the culprit: literature. Academia and books, especially the modern novel, cast a derisive shadow on my quaint automobile obsession. Feeling embarrassed, I eschewed it completely and strived for more meaningful subject matter. But of course, like many formative endeavors of youth, my newfound disdain was a bit wrongheaded, not to mention pretentious.

Cars cars cars. Whether a hotrod, a commuter, or self-driving, they’re all cars. One critique of modern car design stuck with me as particularly insightful. They lamented that these once beloved objects of desire were now so bland that they had become nothing more than appliances, like a dishwasher. But here’s the thing, they’ve always been appliances. No amount of artistry and style can separate a car from its operative nature. Usefulness is part of the charm, is it not? But it also serves as a hard limit on the object's potential as an art object.

But, what if the powerful, expressive craft of shaping metal was unshackled from the motorized vehicle, free from the demands of fenders and passenger compartments?