Originally written by Remo Campopiano
Re-written by Beatrice Lee
The car was packed with just about everything Remo owned, and he was heading out for the three-day journey which would cover over a thousand miles of road. He didn’t remember any fear but there must have been some for he was starting his great adventure…his life as an artist, a sculptor.
He was twenty-nine and it was early September. The car was a 1967 Bonneville. The car rode like a boat and so he called it “Boat”. Boat was thirteen years old; dirty beige, long body with fins and chrome and even then, considered a classic. He and Boat were going to Detroit, specifically to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, just a little southeast of Boat’s birth place in Pontiac. Bloomfield Hills is home to the Cranbrook Academy of Arts and Remo was going there to attend graduate school.
Cranbrook was everything anticipated and more. There were one hundred and fifty art students, all graduate level, living on over three hundred acres of what looked to be a palatial slice of old England. In the sculpture department most students were steel-benders and form-relationship sculptors. Michael Hall, their professor, was a steel-bender but his broad understanding of art and his elegant way of lecturing engaged and informed us all. Bruce and Remo were the rebellious conceptualists. Bruce and Remo, both handsome and charming men often competed for the same women. Remo jokes that Bruce usually won. Turned out they had a lot in common including a certain rivalry and they became good friends.
They used to drive Boat around Detroit exploring. Bruce had grown-up there and served as guide. Bruce loved Boat and would talk about how Boat represented Detroit for him, showing the style and patina of its heyday. As they wandered they discovered that indeed Boat was the celebrity in Detroit that Bruce anticipated. People would signal Remo and ask him to pull over just to talk about his car; where it was born, and how they used to make cars like Boat in the factories not far away. Over time Remo came to appreciate Bruce’s insight and the grit and courage of that city’s people.
A week before the first student art show, Bruce and Remo were headed to a downtown gallery opening. A somewhat rough but not unfriendly looking guy pulled up beside them at a stop light and signaled Remo to roll down his window. He did, thinking this was once again about Boat. Then Remo noticed that the man in the other car looked nervous. He handed Remo something and the car sped away. Remo looked down at the dry brown rough-textured lump in his hand, not sure what he was holding. After taking a sniff Bruce said it was hashish. Remo had never tried hash and felt puzzled about why the man had given it to him. Remo’s mind went blank and then inspiration struck.
“I still don’t have an idea for the art show, maybe the hash could be part of it?” Remo mused out loud. “If we submitted it to the art show I wonder how long it would take for someone to realize what this is and steal it,”
“Hmmm, now Remo, I can think of something better to do with it than to display it,” said Bruce dryly.
“No, I am serious,” Remo said, “what a great experiment! We could call it ’The Claw’s Gift.’ You know like the carny claw machines, sometimes through a twist of fate you get lucky and get a prize.
“I have a clear plastic box that would be perfect.” Remo continued, Duchamp’s ghost with his upside-down urinal called “Fountain,” causing a few goose bumps to rise on his arms. He took it as a sign and decided that this really was the way to go.
After some grumbling about wasted (pun intended) opportunities, Bruce agreed and they submitted “The Claw’s Gift” to the art show, a small plastic boxed brown lumpish object pointing to a casual but mystic moment of surprise, a small ‘wahoo’ of success as we grab the prize. Both of them were surprised when it was accepted.
Two days before the art show Boat finally died, just not worth one more repair job. Bruce offered to buy it from Remo for exactly what Remo had paid for it three years earlier, one hundred dollars. Hey, this was the eighties, then you could buy a car for a hundred bucks.
Luckily for Bruce, Boat gave up the ghost in the middle of the Cranbrook parking lot, spotlighted by a tall street lamp. He took out the torches and cut off the roof. Then he drove the small crane into the back quarry and dragged out three giant boulders. Bruce carefully placed the boulders in the Bonneville, seriously sagging the body, but leaving it still recognizable as the car’s car of its time. With the boulders it had become more, and less, than what it was. Bruce decided to call it “Weight of Ages” and it too was accepted.
About a week into the show, “The Claw’s Gift” was stolen, empty plastic box the only witness. And Boat, now “Weight of Ages,” stayed in the parking lot for several years, a monument to the glory days of the motor city; Remo’s Bonneville, the car that transported him into his life.
Over the years Bruce did well for himself and so did Remo.
“I can still hear Roy Slade, Cranbrook’s then President, rallying us, ‘Cranbrook students are changing the face of twentieth-century America.’ We believed him, and we all tried to live up to his belief in us and the dream he inspired.” – Remo Campopiano
