The things you can do with half a car
Discarded Mini Cooper turned into interesting sculpture by East Vancouver artist
One day Andrew Huggard spotted an ad for a Mini Cooper in the “free” section of Craigslist. But it wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill Mini Cooper, this one had been sliced in half.
Huggard grabbed it, brought it home and planted it in his front yard near East Second Avenue and Lillooet Street in East Vancouver.
“I tried to do a bit of a funky scene,” he explains. “I had this sort of spaceship idea because I had a huge prop from a movie set, and I have an annual party … I’ll probably make them part of the party as the entrance way.”
It’s indeed a funky scene. The front of the car is on one side of his sidewalk, the back on the other, and the pieces jut out of the ground at an angle, like they’ve been flung into the ground from the heavens.
“It’s a fibreglass shell, it’s not a real car,” he explains. “If it was real the city would really have a problem with it.
“The city inspector (came by and) mentioned that in the front of the house you have to have (a piece) below five feet, you can’t have any ornaments or large objects like this. But the backyard is OK.”
Don’t tell the city inspector, but Huggard also has a ninefoot-tall fibreglass beer bottle in his front yard.
“My landlord’s not that impressed (with the Mini Cooper),” says Huggard. “But the nine-foot beer bottle he likes.”
Huggard is attracted to items like this because he’s an artisan and musician who says he likes to make art out of “strange things.”
“I’ve had fun doing a bit of treasure hunting, having fun with stuff that people are discarding or that businesses get rid of,” says the 47-year-old, who sometimes dresses in a gorilla suit to deliver singing telegrams.
In this case, he says he thinks the Mini Cooper came from a local dealership. Because it’s fibreglass and has no engine, it’s light enough to mount on a pole or roof. But it’s still pretty heavy.
“It probably weighs 200 pounds, 250 maybe,” he says. “My neighbour Sam comes over and lends me muscle moving something here and there. He always goes, ‘You’ve got too much stuff.’”
In any event, Huggard’s Mini Cooper pieces are reminiscent of a couple of famous art installations in the U.S.: Cadillac Ranch (where 10 Caddies are half buried in the ground in Amarillo, Texas), and Carhenge (a replica of Stonehenge using cars in Alliance, Neb.).
Making art out of old cars also has a history in Vancouver. Somebody installed their own car sculpture (with giant fins, no less) in the front yard of a home near General Gordon school in Kitsilano.
Artist Marcus Bowcott placed five cars on top of a tree stump in the 1200-block of Quebec Street for the 2015 Vancouver Biennale, and Trans-Am Totem has become a local icon.
“I have a classic Trans-Am,” notes Huggard. “Seeing (the Trans-Am) at the top, it’s like, ‘Gee, I could use some parts.’ ”