Subtractive, additive, and restorative: these are the scupture methodologies familiar to me. One of them has been an acquired taste and expensive. Actually, done right, they’re all expensive.

I almost have the passion of Rodin with scupture, so this latest attempt has been strange in a Jonah-like way. Jonah was the biblical prophet who was sent to a big town of baddies to tell them they were screwing up, how to fix the problem, and what would happen if they didn’t.  Instead of going, he went the opposite direction with haste. The escape was futile and he ended up in an even more dire personal situation.

I feel  a bit of an escape desire. Not so urgently. But then the thing I’ve tried to escape isn’t so sacred or precious to follow through as was Jonah’s, and I don’t want to draw any more than a passing parallel to the vastly differing situations.

What’s similar is this is big, it’s expensive, and there’s a risk that it won’t turn out at all after so much effort.

My sculpture is restorative. It is the reclaimation of a motor car.

Convenient to my back door under the covered patio on a raised platform rests the fiberglass body of a Lotus Europa. The new radiator that I had built waits it’s installation. As does the dash that I rebuilt, reveneered, and will probably do again entirely new in the end. I’ve gone through each guage and made a door on the glove box.

The seat frames are now solid at my hand and I’ve reupholstered and refoamed the cusions. New headliner is applied and a fresh windscreen and new trim await their turn to be installed. I’ve built a replacement seatbelt side anchor and am nearly done with the second one. The rusty hand brake assembly replacement unit has been bought also. I built the heater box from new metal and have cut out the carpet pieces from excellent quality stock. Additionally, I have thick underpad.

The big holdup for the last year has been the brakes. I don’t consider myself a mechanic, but this stuff is too expensive to outsource. The previous owner modified the car to accept a wholly unsuitable master cylinder to replace the no longer available girling unit. Too bad. Now I have to unweld the modification that was made to allow the Camaro Master to fit the car.

Machines have tolerances. This brake system came with a master cylinder with half the bore size of the Chevy unit. So I located a new Datsun dual circuit master cylinder that more closely matches the original from a design and end-use standpoint.

Make no mistake, this thing is a work of beauty. It’s actual sculpture.

To expect that “real art” is purely emotional in all it’s phases of creation would leave out a world of subsequent enjoyment.

For me, it’s not “about the journey” in every creation. Sometimes you just have to cross what you have to cross to get to your destination, fun or not.

Every time I advance the fulfilment of this resurrection, I’m that much closer to driving a car whose on road behavior behavior has no serious rival for pure enjoyment. Nothing like it.

How much greater can any art work be than to evoke joy each time it’s experienced? I expect that of this car.

Say what you will about it’s appearance, I love it.

The only reason I have to force myself to do the work is that  it seems so tedious in the sheer volume of unfinished tasks. It feels as if it will be unending.

But I know better. It has to come together. I have to do it. When I am done, the world will have one more Lotus Europa. It will be the single most expensive art work I’ve ever owned and it just might be the most fun.