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CommentsFunk-tional transformation
Artist Liz Cohen is pretty handy with a welding torch, a talent that has enabled the young Latina to transform a European Trabante into an American icon, which is no small feat.
Cohen, who works out of Don Barsellotti’s Elwood Body Works in Scottsdale, will show off her creation at “Car Culture,” a revved-up exhibition starting Jan. 18 at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.
An automatic smile comes to your lips when watching Cohen’s “Trabantamino” (her name for it) slowly stretch to the full 18-foot length of a ‘73 El Camino. The hiss of hydraulics will be heard every half-hour at the show’s reception as Cohen will demonstrate the vehicle’s powerful transformation.
“This is about who’s in, who counts and who doesn’t,” she explains. “It’s about what it means to become an American. It’s about the creativity of how you negotiate that relationship.”
Cohen, whose parents are originally from Colombia, turns this formerly socialist car into a low-rider with the flick of a switch. She cut down the Trabante’s cab and attached sliding Fiberglas panels she fabricated from the sides of an El Camino. She also put more muscle under the hood: instead of a 28 horsepower engine, she dropped in a Chevy 305 that she found at a local junk yard.
She has a mentor in Bill Cherry, who has been in the auto repair business for 35 years and advises Cohen on her work. “I’ve got guys here who still don’t know how to weld who’ve been here 12 years,” he says about Cohen’s tool skills.
Cohen also is organizing a low rider show in conjunction with SMoCA Nights March 20 outside the museum. Look for radical bicycles and tricycles among wheels on display.
