¼ rear view of sculpture
Domestic Car Cover
2007
Knitted plastic grocery bags, 1995 Ford Taurus
15’ x 5’ x 4’
As part of the group juried exhibition Automation at Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, Detroit, MI
¼ rear view of sculpture
Detail view, side mirror
This was my first foray into oversized knitting using cut up & tied together used plastic grocery bags. For this version I stuck to a standard jersey knit and used brown bags for some Charlie Brown-style zigzag stripes. For later pieces, like Hot Water Cozies or Holiday Wreath, I opted to use a standard garter stitch since it was the most forgiving for the texture and irregularity of the yarn I created.
I use knitting with grocery bags as a medium to tap into typologies of domesticity and consumerism, signifiers or triggers of cultural memories and stories.
— Andy T
Postcard by Andy Malone
Detail of postcard by Andy Malone
“This plastic afghan will exemplify containment, protection, and consumerism when it is utilized not as a couch cover, but as a car cover for a mid-nineties Ford Taurus. I have personal fondness for the Ford Taurus and in my own personal mythology it is the ideal vehicle for the purchasing and delivery of domestic consumable goods. Not only is its primary function to shuttle consumables, it is also the quintessential domestic car, one of this country's greatest consumable goods, and needs to be memorialized now that the Ford company has announced it will no longer produce this model vehicle. Just as an old couch becomes masked from its daily utility with a protective and decorative covering, so will this ‘road furniture’ become covered.”
— Excerpt from project proposal to the gallery
Original proposal to CAID
“My first exhibition of 2007 was Automation at what was then the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (CAID) and I was so excited to be showing there and working with the cool people on the board at the time like Sambuddha Saha, Nick Sousanis, and especially Andy Malone who designed this amazing postcard! Like, lookit it! He made individual interpretations of every artwork in the show and then put those on the show card! I had an absurd piece where I knitted a car cover (like an afghan couch cover) out of plastic grocery bags and then bought a defunct Ford Taurus and had it towed to the backyard of the gallery. This is the 1st time that I ever used a spreadsheet to track & plan my labor hours for an artwork and it surpassed 100 hrs in less than 4 weeks (on top of my 3 teaching positions that semester) I had applied to a juried show and I had submitted this terrible photoshopped sketch, but it got accepted.”
— Statement about the work from an Instagram post
Craigslist email, “Re: 1993 White Ford Taurus for Parts - $200”
Craigslist email, “Broken Ford Taurus”
Craigslist email, “Re: 95 Ford Taurus (White) $400 OBO”