For families who spent time on American lakes and rivers, an outboard motor could represent freedom.
It transformed a boat from something that simply floated into something that could travel—to another shoreline, another fishing spot, another adventure.
Older outboard motors also represent a particular kind of American engineering: mechanical, understandable, serviceable, and built to be maintained.
American Material Memory lives in that combination of technology and experience. The motor is an object, but its real story is the places it carried people.
From the Artist:
Growing up on the St. Clair River, an old Johnson outboard was almost part of the landscape.
You knew the sound. You knew the smell. You knew that wonderful whitish-blue exhaust hanging over the water and the little rainbow of oil floating behind the boat.
Today we'd probably call that an environmental problem. Back then we called it going fishing.
That's what I wanted in this drawing—not simply an old motor, but the memory of boats, docks, fishing, and a childhood where the river was basically our front yard.
Fortunately, the drawing doesn't leak oil on my studio floor. But I can actually smell the gas and two-stroke oil. How?
For families who spent time on American lakes and rivers, an outboard motor could represent freedom.
It transformed a boat from something that simply floated into something that could travel—to another shoreline, another fishing spot, another adventure.
Older outboard motors also represent a particular kind of American engineering: mechanical, understandable, serviceable, and built to be maintained.
American Material Memory lives in that combination of technology and experience. The motor is an object, but its real story is the places it carried people.
From the Artist:
Growing up on the St. Clair River, an old Johnson outboard was almost part of the landscape.
You knew the sound. You knew the smell. You knew that wonderful whitish-blue exhaust hanging over the water and the little rainbow of oil floating behind the boat.
Today we'd probably call that an environmental problem. Back then we called it going fishing.
That's what I wanted in this drawing—not simply an old motor, but the memory of boats, docks, fishing, and a childhood where the river was basically our front yard.
Fortunately, the drawing doesn't leak oil on my studio floor. But I can actually smell the gas and two-stroke oil. How?
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