Toronto Artist Jed Lind Turns Seven 1979 Honda Civics Into Artwork

After his car was stolen and torched in 2008, Jed Lind had to change the way he got around. After riding a bicycle around the streets of L.A. for two years, the Toronto-born artist learned a valuable lesson about how difficult it is to navigate the street of the typical urban jungle without a car.

His experience led him to build “Gold, Silver and Lead,” a towering stack of white 1979 Honda Civics. This piece challenges ideas about mobility and how we travel, and it is on display at the Toronto Sculpture Garden until September 2012. His idea is to get people to think about “slowing things down” and be mindful of extraordinary things that end up being taken for granted.

So why all the 1979 Civics? It all goes back to a time when an energy crisis held the world hostage as oil supply shortages sent gas prices sky high. In 1979, cars tended to be huge gas-guzzlers, until the Honda Civic came along. Made famous by Buckminster Fuller, the utopian American architect and thinker, the Civic was a promise of better times and moving forward.

The name of the sculpture, “Gold, Silver and Lead,” actually comes from a Buckminster Fuller quote (“Gold and silver from the dead turn often into lead”). The sculpture consists of seven Honda Civics stacked on top of each other, going through a succession of dematerializing as they rise up into the sky. All of the cars are missing pieces, and as you move up the totem, you’ll notice how only the frame remains at the top.

“Something I really like about these sculptures is that they appear to be one thing you may not recognize, and then you approach it and it changes,” said Lind. “It’s dematerialized, and all of a sudden, it’s a car being pared down.”

[Source: Toronto Star]