One of the highlights of my stay at Penland School of Crafts this Spring was meeting Jim Barrows and his creative vehicle, Blue Beaver, that he brought on campus. It makes my polka-dot car look somewhat bland. He is the father of Emily Barrows who was also interviewed for this blog in April. Here is my interview with Jim below. Be sure to see the video of a Blue Beaver ride posted above!
Jean:Can you start off by telling me what the Blue Beaver is?
Jim: The Blue Beaver is my response to the dreary boredom of all of the vehicles coming out of Detroit. As I look at a parking lot, they all look like basically squished jellybeans with four wheels on them or somewhat like a toaster oven with four wheels on them. And I thought, why not make vehicles that are interesting and have different odd shapes? Then I thought back when I was me. When I Was 11 or 12 years old, I actually was me. And I thought, well, what were some of the things that I thought about as a child that might be kind of cool? So the concept of a big blue beaver that shoots flames out of its nose and has gazillions of lights on it and a squeaky toy horn on it came about. I knew I could never make it street legal because the popo would not like lights. You’re not supposed to have distracting lights on your vehicle.
So I thought, Well, I just won’t make it street legal. I’ll make it an agricultural vehicle and then I can get all around the street legal thing because if it’s agricultural then it doesn’t really have to have a license and you can take it on the road for short periods of time. I thought I’d just get a garden tractor and then make it into this cartoon character, and that’s what I did!
Jean: And where has the Blue Beaver gone?
Jim: Well it’s gone with me to festivals and given delight and joy to all the neighborhood kids. It gets put on a trailer and it’s taken all over the country. The biggest fun is when I’m driving down the expressway with this thing and people will speed past it and then they’ll slow down and then they’ll look at it. Some people get the whole joke or feeling about it and others don’t. And to some people it’s very offensive and they’ll look at it for a moment and then immediately look back at what they were doing and try not to think about it. Sometimes I pull into a campground late at night having unloaded the whole thing off in a distance and I’ll just show up with this. And people are always drawn to it and people will ask me, Where did it come from? Did you drive this all the way from the city? Why did you do this?
Jean: And where did it come from? How did you make it?
Jim: It started off with a concept first and then I realized I needed skills to make it. So I took welding classes because I knew I needed to weld. I got on Craig’s List and found an old tractor and fixed it all up and then welded and bent steel rods to make it look like a cartoon character and then covered it with expanded metal and then zip-tied a gazillion LED lights on it. I found an ice-melter which is a propane flame thrower type thing that is used for melting ice. I repurposed that to be flame throwers for the nose of the vehicle. So you push little buttons and flames shoot out of its nose.
Jean: That’s great. So what other type of creative pieces, related or unrelated to this, have you done? And what’s led you to doing this?
Jim: Before this, I was making burning vessels. I would take volumetric shapes. These could be things like discarded water tanks or steel canisters and I cut them up with a plasma cutter and make jack-o-lantern type faces in them and put propane lines in it, fill the whole thing with wood and catch the whole thing on fire. Flames would shoot out of the eyeholes and light up the night and it would be very warm. People are immediately drawn to that and entertained by it.
Prior to that, I would go into the woods and look for trees that had been struck by lightening. The lightening damages the tree in such a way that it rots the tree from the inside out. I’d get chainsaws and cut the tree down and it would be hallowed out in the center and I’d also cut jack-o-lantern faces in them and then build a big fire and put the tree on top of the fire. The tree would burn from the inside out with flames shooting out the jack-o-lantern face. That was called Burning Head and I did that project on various scales for years.
Jean: How do you put on these events? How do you draw a crowd? Who is your audience? Is there a live audience?
Jim: There always seems to be an audience somehow. My favorite thing is to come to a festival campsite and ahead of time create this thing and around midnight fire it up. It’s what I call prehistoric VCR. This tree catches on fire and incinerates from the inside out. Because the tree is hallow, it has a chimney effect. It sucks hot gases in the bottom and blows smoke out the top. People cannot help but be drawn to it and watch it.
Jean: Do you document it?
Jim: I have not. I have been scolded multiple times for not documenting these events. Other people document it for me. I’ll do pencil and paper sketches afterwards or sketches of the thing burning.
Jean: And do you show the pencil and paper sketches anywhere? Do you share them in anyway?
Jim: Not really. My feeling on this is that this particular type of art is the art of the moment, the art of the experience. And unknown to the people I’m burning this with, I coat the inside of a log with various heavy metals like arsenic which burns red, and copper which burns blue or green depending on the temperature. I’ll take fireworks apart and fill little wormholes and defects with different types of gunpowder and as the thing burns, little things happen inside that only last for a second and people will say: Did you see that? A lot of it is "sight gaggery.”
Jean: Sight gaggery. I like that. Are there other aspects of your art making that your want to share?
Jim: I like pen and paper. I love to make sketches. Usually it’s on a cocktail napkin at a bar. I’ll take the napkins and I'll Xerox them because the napkin doesn’t last very long.
The Blue Beaver started with a cocktail napkin sketch and I still have that. I’ll keep those things.
Jean: So what’s next? What are you going to make now?
Jim: I’ve had people ask me that. I have one more art car that I’m going to do. There are other people in my city [Atlanta] that are doing this. People will see these cars and insist that I help them with their vision. One person wants to make a huge mobile clamshell with a lounge in it. There’s a lot of mechanical stuff that goes into it. So a lot of what I’m doing is somewhat boring. I’m making the transmission and a lot of the gutsy stuff that goes into it and allowing the person that’s doing the clamshell do the clamshell part. It’s going to be called the Clam Comet. It’ll be a fairly fast moving vehicle. It’s going to be an open clamshell that goes about 45 m.p.h.
Jean: Do you have any web/internet presence?
Jim: I’m asked that all the time and the answer is always no. My thought is that…
Jean: Until now, when I blog about this…
Jim: Right, but you have to actually be there to experience it. The art is there to be enjoyed and until recently I burned it all on the site. So I would spend days, weeks making something and then enjoy it and burn it. This is very hard for people. They didn’t really want to see these things burning. I’ve actually had people try to put one of my art pieces out, in other words, save it from me.
Jean: Is that going to be the destiny of the Blue Beaver as well?
Jim: No, the Blue Beaver, I think, will live on for a long time and ultimately be auctioned off for charity.
Jean: Why is this one different?
Jim: It’s hard to burn one of these things without it just releasing unbelievable toxic substances and creating an environmental disaster. Not the least of which the tanks exploding and people running and screaming.
On the other hand, it might be kind of fun to have the Blue Beaver running across the desert and then the whole thing catch on fire and explode. That’d be fun to document, especially if it happened at night.
Jean: Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Jim: It gives me tremendous pleasure to have people come up to me and talk to me about this. It’s the highest compliment when people come up to me and ask me questions about what I’m doing. Even if it’s in jest or even if it’s in seriousness. My favorite question so far is: “Is this real or did you make it up?”
Jean: I don’t know how I’d answer that.
Jim: Usually I just say yes.
Jean: Do you have something in particular that you want people to take away from your pieces?
Jim: Yeah, I want them to laugh and to think about things differently. I would really like for them to stop driving boring cars. For love of God, do something with these cars. Put fins on them, put faces on them, cover them in fur. Please do something. Cars are so boring. Why would you want boring cars? Turn it into a monster or a fire hydrant. Just do something with it!
