ANCIENT INSPIRATION, MODERN MATERIALS

Local Sculptor Explores Society, Automobile Through Art

From Cars to Art

Tom Aitken's yard has a collection of old cars -but he's not fixing them. He's making art with them. A full-time sculptor, Aitken works out of a rural studio. Before becoming a full-time artist, Aitken was a design director, traveling the world in the automotive industry. As a young man, he worked on assembly lines and in prototype shops in Detroit. From his youth, he remembers the common sight of young people working on cars in their driveways, hoods propped open, "tricking them out."

Aitken tries to express the importance of the automobile to his generation's psyche through his art."Cars," he says, "represented a personal relationship, coming of age, adulthood and achieving the American dream." Aitken's works capture the striking design of classic American cars from the '50s and '60s. "Tj" enjoys drawing parallels between ancient art and modern technology.

nikes at logsdon Nikes Monumentals
He calls one series of his automobile sculptures The Nikes after the Greek goddess of victory. When the ancient Greeks conquered a city, he explains, they installed sculptures of the beautiful winged goddess Nike in the town square as a sign of their dominance. Aitken goes on to compare the modern baby boomer, who has a different status symbol that he collects. In the baby boomer's garage is an antique from his own past, indicating his achievement of wealth, or at least his restorative capability - his prized car. Some bear the patina of their years and await a new status as objects of art. And so, Aitken's sculpture has replaced the goddess Nike with parts of boomer era cars perched at graceful angles, reminiscent of her wings, to represent the ultimate symbol of American victory and success: the automobile, now the most recognized sculptural forms on the planet. The Boomer's Nike was the first of the Monumentals in this series, paying homage to Aitken's past career in car design and his love of sculpture and art history. It was a study which led to the 57 Descending. Descending takes the famous cubist composition (Nude Descending a Staircase, DuChamp) and makes it 3D with auto components. Bug now joins Boomer out in the garden of the Logsdon 1909 Gallery in Chicago.

What's in Your Worship?: Spiritual Sculptures

shielded heart Shielded Heart
Aitken takes the iconic automobile off of its pedestal in his series called the OverHeads, in which he uses sculpture to express spiritual concepts. He noticed how car parts resemble faces, and eventually began creating tribal masks out of overhead consoles. Aitken realized that "cultural masks from around the world are spiritual icons making statements about spiritual conditions" and that each "mask" could represent some spiritual problem in the modern world. "What's in Your Worship?" is the slogan for this series of over 20 pieces. One called Persistence of Memory represents memories from the past coming back, destroying our relationship with God and prevent us from spiritual growth, he says. "The Big Monkey represents having monkeys on your back - addictions and too much to do."  Shielded Heart is about bitterness from rejection. In explanation of the series' title, Aitken says that "to really get in a state of worship you have to drain your heart of the other things that are in there; the other things we worship, like cars, which fill our hearts so we don't have room to worship God." Aitken wrote verbal statements to accompany each OverHead and explain their spiritual significance. He is currently working on a book that will present photos of the collection along with the texts. The statements, he says, are "intense - one person said she could only read six of them; that's all she could contain."

Impactful Art:

Impact Series Impacted Figures
The third series of Aitken's current works titled Impact also uses automobiles, but in their entirety, and with humanoid figures. These are sculptures inspired by the changes wrought by the automobile on human society.  Car forms seem to compel figures to splash or fly in Aitken's work.  The 3D figures are liquid -frozen at a moment of motion, with their blown over forms and title of Impacted Figures. And the relief works use fabric and wood to create people and a landscape in motion. 

In all of his works, Aitken strives to combine aesthetic appeal with spiritual or social meaning."I hope they have enough visual impact that people will appreciate them beyond the object," he says, because "many artists today are so involved in their concept that the results are not pretty."Aitken attempts to make "multi-dimensional," high-aesthetic art rather than giving just "spiritual justification" to concept pieces. One of his goals in Chicago's Arts District is to get the attention of people who are usually uninterested in a spiritual message, but who like interesting art."In my life it's all connected -- God, work, art, spiritual relationships," Aitken says. "Good art touches people on different levels."

Portions of this article taken from Ancient Inspiration, Modern Materials as published in The Holland Sentinel, Holland, MI, 2/08.