Deborah Lewis loves making art. She enjoys working with all kinds of materials, including metal, ceramic, and acrylic. And she has lots of ideas. What about working with hoods? Car and truck hoods, that is. Her first trip to a car graveyard was a life-altering and inspirational experience. She quickly learned that beaten-up hoods are like beaten-up people—they have great depth of character.
Deborah wanted to make art with these hoods, to create something meaningful, beautiful, lasting. But the learning curve (and the logistics) was steep. First, she had to acquire the hoods, no easy matter. Deborah soon learned that one person’s piece of “junk” is another’s treasure, that she was vying with a subculture of folks who restore old vehicles and are willing to pay dearly for an especially cool hood. By trial and error, luck, and help from friends, she figured out how to get affordable and wonderful hoods. Then she connected with an artisan metal fabricator (shout-out to Joel!) who cut the hoods into panels easily hung like a picture—inside a home or outside as a relief-sculpture.
Each hood is a one-of-a-kind and arrives to its next chapter of its life--as a piece of art--with different challenges. Deborah dives in. She uses what is needed to evoke the best out of each panel. This may mean keeping some of the original car paint; other times she’ll grind the paint off. Sometimes she’ll intentionally rust parts of the hood. Deborah coats her hoods with industrial acrylic. Some of them are surprisingly light (a few pounds), others not so much.
Deborah has been making ceramic tiles and hand-built pieces in her kiln for decades. After coating the car hood, she creates colorful ceramic tile pieces and adheres them to the panel with permanent adhesive made from cement.
The results are uniquely captivating, beautiful, and (pun intended) riveting. She calls the ongoing project “Hoods.”