ROAD TO RENEWAL
Jeff Schofield
ROAD TO RENEWAL
Jeff Schofield
This catalog is published to coincide with the “Road to Renewal” art exhibition held from 7 through 15 December 2024 at Talking Dolls Gallery, 6833 East Davison Street, Hamtramck, MI 48212
Layout, cover design, and typesetting by Peter Bjorndal
Main artwork images by Jeff Schofield, except Wrong Track by Clare Gatto
Written texts and essay illustrations by Jeff Schofield except as otherwise noted
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained.
This publication is also available online as a digital file.
© 2024 Jeff Schofield
40 West Howard Street, Studio #116B, Pontiac, Michigan 48342
JeffSchof@yahoo.com
Printed on acid-free paper produced from chlorine-free pulp. Printed in the USA by Maple Printing Press, Detroit, Michigan
“Charged Expressions; Exploring Environmental Themes in Electric Vehicle Art” by Sean Bieri
Artworks by Jeff Schofield
Charging Stations
EV Avatar
EV Centipede
EV Superhighway
Wrong Track
EV Wall Crawl
Traffic Jam Series
“Visualizing an E. V. Future; Art at the Intersection of Nature and Technology” by Jeff Schofield
CHARGED EXPRESSIONS:
Exploring Environmental Themes in Electric Vehicle Art
by Sean Bieri
TURNS OUT DRIVING UP I-75 from Hamtramck to Pontiac is a pretty good way to get in the mood to view the latest art by Jeff Schofield. After nearly an hour of road work and road rage, speed traps and map apps, back-ups and slow-downs, I piloted my humble Ford Focus into the parking lot of the former auto coach manufacturing facility where Schofield has his studio. Rattled and seething at my fellow motorists, I sat in my car for a minute and waited for my adrenaline to subside.
Schofield was seated at a rather incongruous picnic table near the building’s side entrance. After following him back to his studio, I found myself in yet another traffic jam—but at least now I was seeing it from a god’s-eye view, standing outside the fray. Hundreds of cars, albeit of the Matchbox, Hot Wheels, Playskool or Tonka varieties, were pinned to the walls or arrayed on the floor. Many were lined up like a rush hour
Arrested Vehicle
4x4 vehicle tied with jute ropes and steel cables
expressway, while some milled around like they were trying to leave an outdoor music venue. A bunch of them were trussed up with copper wire into a rectangular bale. Others were wound with wire and dangled from drywall screws, looking like bugs caught mid-commute by an ambitious spider. A few even seem to have merged into a scuttling robotic centipede. But none of them, it seemed to me, were free.
Isn’t that what cars are all about—freedom?
The attraction of automobiles—and you don’t have to tell the car companies or their ad agencies this—is that driving them is such an intensely subjective experience; they become extensions of our bodies, amplifying our sense of power, autonomy, and individuality. In short, they promise freedom. Schofield’s art puts the lie to this idea. There’s a wide variety of makes, models, and paint jobs in his collection of toy cars: detailed die-cast monster
Lawn Chair Series - Water
Lawn chairwith used water containers tied with paracord
Photo by Clare Gatto
Used artist brushes tied to metal mesh with paracord
trucks for sophisticated collectors; chubby cartoon construction vehicles for kids; ambulances and police cruisers; exotic hot rods and hippie VWs; various iterations of the Batmobile. But however insistent their individual identities are, they’re all ensnared in the same system. Roads, gas stations, parking, lack of parking, wrecks, sprawl, law enforcement, insurance, not to mention the stresses that a car-centric society places on those
Capital Gate
Sustainable architecture and urban design
without cars: the invention that freed us has also in many ways made us its subjects. And that’s before you factor in the egregious impact automobiles have had on the environment. Ecological sustainability and resource conservation are subjects Schofield has engaged with going back to his days as an architect. Among other things, he co-designed the Capital Gate, a canted, undulating skyscraper in the UAE nicknamed the “Leaning Tower of Abu Dhabi,” which boasts many built-in energy-conserving features, as well as innovative design that reduced the amount of materials needed in its construction. Now, Schofield up-cycles various found objects into his art, both natural (twigs and branches, sheets of ice, charred pine timbers collected after a forest
Upcycled Artist Brushes
Photo by Clare Gatto
Photo by Gerry O’Leary
Outside Ourselves
Storm-damaged pear tree branches
Collaboration with Saree Silverman
fire) and artificial ones (lawn chairs, medical supplies, and every manner of candy-colored jar, tub and bottle known to capitalism, bundled into parcels with bungee cords or string). He even includes (self-reflectively, perhaps) discarded paint tubes, brushes, and other tools into his cast-off constructions. Schofield has rescued all this detritus from its fate in a landfill somewhere by elevating it to the status of art, though in geological terms even that is a temporary reprieve; ars longa (to somewhat misquote the ancients), but plastics are longer still.
Apologies to Jeff for suggesting that even his art must one day succumb to entropy, but then “partial solutions” is pretty much the theme of his recent work involving automobiles. Notice that it’s electric vehicles specifically that are the subject of
these pieces. Each of the mismatched conveyances in that post-concert cluster on the floor is tethered by a chaotic tangle of extension cords, cables, and old-fashioned spiraling telephone cords, all leading up to wall-mounted breaker boxes and power outlets. Those spider-caught Matchbox cars wound in copper wire also resemble dynamos. In another piece, various vehicles hang by electrical wires, each of which is hooked up to an outlet or light switch, like kittens clambering for a turn at their mother’s teats. Copper-top batteries and glass fuses are threaded into the wires as well. These familiar household electrical items are shorthand here for the otherwise incomprehensible complexity of the electric power grid upon which virtually everything in our lives now depends—including, increasingly, our cars.
Ice Waves Molded ice
Michigan Forest Fire Burnt tree trunks hung on metal chains
Electric vehicles have been touted as a way forward and a way out of the environmental calamities wrought by the gas-guzzling dinosaurs of old. To be sure, reducing fossil fuel consumption will be a huge win for the environment. But the day when most vehicles on the road are EVs is a ways off. Meanwhile, most of the infrastructure used by old-timey cars will still be necessary, and new infrastructure will need to be built. Oil consumption will be reduced, but the mining of materials for car batteries, and the subsequent disposal of those batteries after use, will present new environmental problems, not to mention political and humanitarian ones.
Behaviors have consequences. One piece in particular at Schofield’s studio got my attention: a spectral form, about the height of a human, made up of switch boxes, flashlight batteries, and toy cars dangling by wires from a fuse plate. Trailing behind it arcs a series of foot-long yellow extension cords, daisy-chained together like a skeletal spine. It reminded me of nothing so much as Jacob Marley’s ghost, dragging its chains, come to warn us all to mend our ways, or bide the end.
Detroit, October 2024
Toxic Brew
Used plastic cups tied to metal mesh with paracord
Photo by Clare Gatto
CHARGING STATIONS
Recycled electrical equipment and used toy vehicles tied with electrical wiring 120 x 120 x 60 inches
BASED IN DETROIT, I'm exploring the development of electric vehicles currently underway in the city. This installation features used electrical equipment and second-hand toy vehicles from local thrift stores in my Detroit neighborhood. The artwork expresses the current state of flux and chaos in the evolving EV market. This market already includes cars, trucks, boats, trains, and
planes. The installation highlights the complexities and trade-offs involved in the messy transition to this new technology.
Above: The fuse box doors feature Carfax reports of used electric vehicles for sale in the Detroit metro area. This includes Tesla, Chevy Bolt, Ford 150 pick-up truck, and others.
EV AVATAR
Recycled electrical equipment, used flashlight batteries, and used toy cars hung on electrical wiring 96 x 36 x 18 inches
THIS HANGING SCULPTURE PERSONIFIES the current transition to electric vehicles. The ghostly form is a metaphor of humans bound up in unsustainable modes of transportation. The batteries and elec-
trical equipment were upcycled from Habitat for Humanity Restores in the Detroit metro area. The toy vehicles were found in garage sales and thrift stores.
EV CENTIPEDE
Used toy vehicles and recycled electrical equipment connected with copper wire 24 x 120 x 36 inches
WE ARE TAKING INCREMENTAL STEPS towards a transition to electric vehicles. I arranged these used materials in a horizontal layout, evoking a winding road with an uncertain destination. The vehicles held up above the ground are “transformer” cars, which I collected at thrift stores in
the Detroit metro area. EV passengers will benefit from healthier lives in a cleaner transportation environment. This installation highlights the gradual development of electric vehicle technology, much like the slow and steady progress of a centipede.
EV SUPERHIGHWAY
Used toy cars & recycled electrical equipment hung with electrical wire 90 x 72 x 8 inches
THE FUSES AND ELECTRICAL BOXES come from Habitat For Humanity Restores in the Detroit area. The toy cars come from garage sales and thrift stores. I arranged these used items like a 10-lane electric superhighway. The sheer proliferation of cars contradicts the effort to reduce pollution through electric power. The installation also expresses the experimental nature of current EV
development. Technical challenges include the mining of toxic rare-earth minerals for lithium-ion batteries, their hazardous disposal, and increased power plant pollution while expanding charging station networks. So electric vehicles do not embody ideal “green” transportation solutions to climate change problems.
WRONG TRACK
Toy vehicles tied to metal mesh with rope and ribbons. 96 x 24 x 48 inches
THIS ASSEMBLY OF PLASTIC AND METAL toys was collected in thrift stores around Detroit. The artwork is a comment on the city’s primary industry, motor vehicle production. During the current transition to electric vehicles, these colorful and whimsical replicas of gas guzzlers represent an
obsolete technology. They’re all facing downwards because they’re on the wrong track. The twisted and convoluted ropes are a metaphor of the planet trapped by the polluting effects of our mobile society, generating greenhouse gases that lead to global warming and climate change.
EV WALL CRAWL
Recycled toy vehicles bound with electrical wires 16 x 36 x 1 inches
THE WRAPPING OF TOY CARS with copper wires references the coils in electric motors and turbines at electric power plants. The vehicles are arranged linearly, like a highway traffic jam, but with the cars facing in different directions. As
such, this piece embodies the notion that EV developments are getting in their own way as they navigate a world of technical, commercial, social, and political problems.
TRAFFIC JAM SERIES
Used toy vehicles and copper wires melted onto wood panel 10 x 12 x 2 inches
I MELTED THESE TOY CARS onto a recycled plywood board. Tied down with copper wires, they comment on problems facing the electric vehicle industry in Detroit. While this emerging technology is “greener” than conventional gas engines, it still presents environmental problems that are
slow to be addressed and resolved. The transition to electric vehicles, with all its complexities and challenges, is a messy and multifaceted process that requires innovative thinking and ecological design. The two pieces presented here are part of a larger series of artworks.
VISUALIZING AN E.V. FUTURE:
Art at the Intersection of Nature and Technology
by Jeff Schofield
COLORFUL PLASTIC DEBRIS, shiny metal scraps, rusty car parts, and burnt tree trunks. These broken objects embody tensions and conflicts between humanity and nature. My art practice explores the acts and remnants of human intrusions upon the earth. Working with found materials, I create immersive installations depicting visual aspects of climate change. My multi-disciplinary artworks probe the intersections between sculpture, architecture, installation and land art to comment on humanity’s complicated relationship with nature. This relationship can be regenerative, dismissive, exploitative, thoughtful, fraught, nostalgic, and more.
Used car parts hung on ropes and pulleys
Found objects are my palette. Beach clean-ups, dumpster dives, and garage sales provide fertile ground for artistic inspiration as well as raw materials for making art. I upcycle read-mades of all sorts, including discarded plastic, used tools, charred wood, and sidewalk litter, marking events like wildfires, flooding, and urban neglect. Through processes of collecting and cataloguing, I create large scale artworks evoking cycles of growth, decay, death, and rebirth. These installations interrogate the landscape, both natural and constructed, to express critical narratives that question the sustainability of our globalized society.
Barn Razing
Salvaged barn wood
Event-based artwork
Hanging Ford Escort
Photo by Sarah Thomas
Photo by Clare Gatto
I create environmental artworks in three different veins; event-based pieces, site-specific installations, and found-object artworks. My event-based artworks involve natural materials recovered from forest fires, flooded rivers, and decayed buildings. My site-specific artworks feature large-scale outdoor installations involving forest settings, farm lands, and building facades. My colorful found-object artworks celebrate gaudy plastic and metal debris recovered from beaches, parks, and cityscapes. Both a sculptor and an architect by training, I prefer to work at a large scale to create spacious outdoor installations and immersive indoor pieces. Some of my larger pieces are performances recorded on video. The artistic expression is always architectonic, rhythmic, repetitive. Through disruption and provocation,
my artworks comment on human transgressions of nature and the built environment. Based in Detroit, I am currently working with used toy cars and electrical wires to comment on electric vehicles now under development by auto makers here. While this “clean” technology pollutes less than gas engines, it presents other environmental challenges. This includes mining of toxic rare-earth minerals for lithium-ion batteries, their hazardous disposal, and increased power plant pollution while expanding charging station networks. To better examine these issues, I gathered used electrical equipment and second-hand toy vehicles from local thrift stores in my Detroit neighbourhood. This exhibition, titled “EV Upcycling; from Scrap to Sculplture,” expresses the current state of flux and chaos in the evolving EV
1000 Tin Cans Recycled aluminum cans hung on cotton ropes Object-based video
Alaskan Oil Drums Abandoned metal oil drums tied with paracord Site-based artwork
Used toy vehicles, resin, and cocktail parasols
market. It highlights the complexities and tradeoffs involved in the messy transition to this new technology.
“Road to Renewal” also expresses the experimental nature of current EV development. In Detroit and around the world, converting to electric vehicles is proving difficult. The network of charging stations is not expanding as fast as expected. The availability of rare earth elements for lithium-ion batteries is hampered by market uncertainties. While car makers have solved problems related to battery reliability and mileage limitations, technical constraints continue to require innovation and experimentation in EV design. And electric vehicle sales volumes have not kept pace with earlier commercial results. So electric vehicles do not embody ideal “green” transportation solutions to climate change problems.
The purpose of this art exhibition is to immerse the viewer in an emotional experience evoking current environmental issues. I hope the bright materials and vivid colors featured in “Road to Renewal” will bring out the joy of upcycling found objects into art. However, the underlying environmental issues involving electric vehicles are serious and urgent. The show also contrasts the possibilities and limitations of recycling and recovery. Ultimately, we are all on this journey together, a road of renewal that hopefully leads toward sustainable living on earth.
Detroit, November 2024
Fire of Our Own Making
Performance with scavenged wood on fire
Alternative Fuel
TALKING DOLLS DETROIT
THE MISSION OF TALKING DOLLS is to empower our northeast Detroit neighborhood through justice-focused initiatives. We create a nexus of progressive art and community-led activism through access to our shop, artist studios, and gallery space for workshops, performances and celebration. It is led by co-directors Wes Taylor, Ron Watters, and Andrea Cardinal.