Over two dozen Pieces

Overheads-“What’s In Your Worship?”

These mask-like works address the modern spiritual conditions that mass production has spawned. The car kicked off the assembly line and this society.

Car parts are the basic materials for these works. An automotive overhead console often has a very primitive "face." This attribute has been elaborated on with shredded tires, upholstery and other items to produce objects that prompt reflection on who and how we really are.

Tj finds different ways to design in energy. Consider the Tire shreds. Steel is heated to liquid and strained and spun into thousands of yards of high strength wire. Then this is meticulously woven into patterns that are wrapped into a band in a hoop and injected with tough synthetic rubber to make a tire. This is inflated and put on a vehicle which spins it against pavement for thousands of miles under tremendous pleasure at very high speeds. Eventually they explode flapping wildly and throwing pieces off that look like plant life, or animal parts. These are collected and sorted for use in the Overheads series.

Origins of the OverHeads

Early Masks, Form Analysis, and a Piling System - Collecting Objects of Intrigue, a Sculptor's Method

In a former life (back in the eighties) when Tj was doing museum reproductions, he molded a series of African faces for an entrepreneur and produced editions of these pieces. In teaching his "Analysis of Form" course he looked at the topic of line use, hidden images, emphasis, and impact from an historic perspective referring to the power of objects in various societies through the ages. He references tribal objects in these materials. These types of phenomena have piqued his intrigue meter for years.

Modern Tribal Experiences

In modern Industrial jargon an organization's knowledge on a topic, the capabilities and wisdom to excel at something, is referred to as "Tribal Knowledge." As an industrial design director, a key task for Tj was increasing the tribal knowledge on topics of design process, product awareness of features, materials, competitor offerings, functionality, and content, essentially everything there is to know about a product to be designed. One of the Key products in their studios was the luxury car overhead.

Tj noticed that when a group focuses so much energy on a topic, it becomes akin to worship. Design teams get so absorbed that they may ignore all else to have the most "Tribal Knowledge." Angst and tension mount to an unhealthy level, and then burn-out strikes the design team, and they start questioning the structure of life and their own personal spiritual condition. This Tribal phenomenon exists in the car collector culture as well. (If you have ever seen the restoration fanatics haggle about details of authenticity you've seen it too.) Both antique collectors and luxury car buyers have a palpable worship of these objects that is as strong as primitive cultures had for their iconic objects. Tj became extremely aware of these emotional conditions as he longed to be doing sculpture rather than dealing with his car part tribe. Over a 15 year period Tj collected test samples from overhead projects for luxury cars, which have become his series "the OverHeads." See video of them in the studio!

The first studies were digital photographs of the overhead consoles printed on white and then sketched over top with markers and pens. Tj rescanned and sketched over them again in a computer program. They were printed out again and tiled or assembled to exact life size of the objects to review the designs. A group of these early original studies are available framed with black metal under acrylic.

The three dimensional work began in 07. The more than two dozen separate pieces adorned shows in Holland, Grand Rapids, and Chicago. Tj still frequently takes photographs and sketches on the computer to develop concepts. A group of these has been selected for printing posters to celebrate the OverHeads series with the tag line "What's in your Worship?" The bottom line for TJ was used in his acceptance speech for the Eyes on Design automotive fine art award: Psalm 20:7 "They boast in their chariots, and they boast in their horses, but as for me and mine we will boast in the Lord."

Road Feathers

The energy needed to produce a steel belted radial is incredible: heat, speed, motion to spin steel into wire, and it takes gigantic presses to form steel and rubber to make a tire. Then time, and one hundred thousand miles of high pressure inflated tension under friction against concrete wear off enough rubber to weaken the tire. Finally, the violent explosion, flapping, shredding, delaminating, mangling and flying off of pieces happens, to produce the elegant but incredibly tough "road feathers."

If you have ever been in the presence of this event you won't forget the violence, noise and sense of danger. Tj is constantly searching the highways for great specimens for the art works.

This can be a dangerous hobby as well because the best specimens are usually on busy sections of freeway. In the studio he sorts and classifies them using his "piling system" for use in artworks.

The Piling System

Tj collects many types of materials and organizes them for review of potential. His "piling system" for materials has produced several types of works and helps him see the types of work that are possible and the combinations that are intriguing. He essentially collects raw materials like fabric, wood, types of objects like car overhead consoles, and bizarre cast offs like shredded tires from the highways of America. Studying the piles of stuff, sorting them and observing their properties has produced works like "Spring Melt" (walnut & Fiberglass) and the "Speed of change" from a trailer full of long cedar planks and a large rack of upholstery fabric and "Imperfect vessel" from tire pieces he calls "road feathers". He chose the tire shreds and test samples of overhead consoles for luxury cars that were collected over a 15 year period for the "OverHeads" series. He put the console parts up and sorted them into categories for works. (see vid clip) It is a critical part of the studio process to constantly collect and study materials. He has gone to old mining sites for hematite tailings, and to other states for colored marble fines for concrete formulas. While experimenting with large piece construction techniques Tj has invented a finish for Fiberglass using barrels of raw granules of solid surface (Corian®) ingredients gleaned from a closing company. These have been used on the Nike Monumentals.

The Spiritual Perspective: What's In Your Worship?

When I think about what consumes me, where my mental energy really goes, day to day, it is a little scary. My mental energy pie chart would have: Family, Work, Money, Art, Cars, Food, Writing, God, Health, Music, Sex and a few other miscellaneous items. I have to confess there are not enough of the right things, in the right proportions on my chart. What is your biggest slice? Have you ever really thought about what you dwell on all day and considered your chart? A friend recently did an article on the difference between the Greek and the Hebrew definitions of worship. We Americans definitely take the Greek view. We separate the act of worship from our daily existence and define it as an activity, to be pondered in itself, done or not done, and ignored if we so choose. The Hebrew perspective is that we worship as a part of our existence, all day throughout life, and it is how we are made. The question for a person in this scenario is "What do we focus on, crave, revere, and hold as important or sacred?" These two views couldn't be more distinct. Working in the car design field, we would absolutely obsess on every detail of the industry, the products, the process of development, for 50 to 60 hours a week to the point of mania. (But, after all that is what they paid us for) And most of us would spend countless hours on our personal automobile fixes; buying, selling, collecting, going to shows, restoring, maintaining, driving ad infinitum! In the Hebrew view we really spent most of our time worshiping the automobile!

Enthusiasts - the competitive herd mentality

At a show or event you can obsess with your fellow buffs about authenticity, production statistics, industry lore, current trends, and of course- grouse about, and critique the stuff on either side of your position! Yes, organized events draw out the worship in great depth and magnitude. And these last two statements apply universally to any modern obsession; sports, guns, music, art, clothes, wine, you name it! We get so knowledgeable that we start to be indignant to the novice. Yes we can now compare how we rate on the "Snobometer" for all our passions, "On cars he is a 6, on beer a 7, but the guitar thing he is off the meter at 12!" How many passions can one person actually hold at once? And more importantly, what do all these hours of contemplation supplant in our lives?

In each pursuit we achieve goals, we acquire something new, we crest a hill only to note the mountain we couldn't see just beyond our conquest. On some items we finally realize the "minisculity" of our knowledge and capability and give up the striving. Or we back off burned out. At the end of a life what will remain? What did we find fulfilling? God designed each one of us with certain bents and passions that align with His way for us. Many poor substitutes supplant these perfect walks with Him where there is incredible peace and a pure satisfaction of life lived by the moment in the way we were created to be, with God. If you have never experienced this flow, ask Him to show it to you. At the end of the day the life of true joy is worth so much more than all the striving. So,

What's in your Worship? -Tj Aitken