Graphics and 9 days to go!

My gallery Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects has been a huge help with this race car project.  Supporting me on USA Artists, Letting me have a garage sale in the gallery and generally putting up with my rather scattershot approach to my career.  They've definitely earned the title Sponsor.

Doing the graphics was my challenge.  I didn't want vinyl lettering - it looks way too contemporary.  My initial thought was to do a stencil but that didn't work.

Then I thought I'd use a sign painting brush and run a little border around it.  Basically, it was really sloppy and a very bad choice of colors.

So I sanded it down and used the shadow of the stencil as a starting point.  It came together and I actually learned a bit.  For example that Cooper Black font is pretty easy to do on the side of a car.  The paint wants to run down and that feeds the blobby lower part of the letter.

It's not perfect and could use a little help but it feels like something from on of the early races.

-thanks Susanne!

Inspiration - old photos

Kenny Younghusband my dad's co-driver and best friend

George Plimpton

me

Drawn to Television

11 days until the race.

New Old Roof

I needed a sheet metal roof for car 23/28 and was just about to head out to the metal supply shop, when I looked up.  In the rafters of my garage was a hood. 

Not just any hood.  This one was from the first car 23.  A "race" car which never ran, was eventually cut into pieces and made into art.

I had struggled with the hood for a while and attempted several mediocre paintings on it.

I turns out the hood fit over the drivers compartment almost perfectly.

I bent it a little, ground off some bits, gave it a coat of paint and bolted it on.

 It's great and maybe redeems the original car 23.  It also feels like the spirit of the old races.  Just use what's available and make it work.

inspiration - abandoned hotwheel

Found this while walking with the boys today.

The Roll Cage is in and it's awesome.

Picked up the car today with it's new cage, seats and harnesses.  It's surprising what a difference it makes. The car's heavier but feels more solid and definitely way more comfortable.

36 days until the start of the race.

Now, I just need window nets, a roof, cup holders and I'm set.

Manual Haiku - RX7

Note

a pencil or something

as illustrated, to avoid

possible tape damage.

The Roll Cage has arrived!

The roll cage arrived at Man-a-fre last weekend at it is an awesome beast.  Dave at 4plus did a great job.  I went with a family style cage because eventually I'd like to get the back seat back in the car.

Oh, and the new seats are actually comfortable! 

 It's being installed and should be done in the next couple days.  Here's a regular family style cage so you can see the difference.

Car 23 becomes Car 28

It turns out we didn't get #23 for the Mexican 1000.  Even though we were the 10th team to register the 8th team to took 23 (the list of entries is pretty interesting, I'm really intrigued by the 1928 Willys Whippet) So we're officially Car 28, which meant a paint job was in order.

 Car 28 had quite a few adventures this weekend.  A trip out to Rowher flats with George where the electrical system had a momentary failure (the auxiliary power wire came loose from the battery).

And our first trip to Hungry Valley (which was amazing).  Where as we exited the park my brake job failed.  A roadside repair got the rear brakes working and we limped home.

Video coming soon.

There's plenty more to report.  The rear disc brakes are hooked up, the fuel cell is almost installed and the roll cage is finished.  I hope the new seats make as good of a dog bed as the old ones.

Rowher Flate 3-8-12

An article I'm in - Times Quotidian

A really in-depth review of last December's show at Susanne Vielmetter's "Sean Duffy's - Garage Sale" just came out on the Times Quotidian website.  Nice article on a nice site.
http://www.timesquotidian.com/2012/03/05/inside-the-artists-studio—sean-duffy/

Inspiration - old gallery pencils

I came across these while cleaning my desk.

Pencils from two now defunct galleries.  One of the earliest solo shows I had, "teach me to love" was at Deep River back in 1998. 

I did a series of fake fur under vinyl paintings documenting Captain Kirk's relationship with himself.  Like George's it suffered from closing right before the internet really broke so there's not much information online.  I did find a review by Doug Harvey and a collection of the show announcements.

Two years later I was looking at early video games, geometric abstraction and had the final show at George's appropriately title "Game Over."

Manual Haiku - 1971 Oldsmobile

NINETY-EIGHT

underfoot as well

-in sumptuous carpeting.

especially deep

Inspiration - Rough Rider 100 poster

I came across this  poster for the "Borrego Rough Rider 100" in my folks work room.  One of my sisters ran this race.  I really like the dune buggy graphic and might need to make it a t-shirt for the boys.