Published on Dustin M. Wax (http://www.dwax.org)

If You're Ever in Nebraska

By Dustin
Created 07/19/2008 - 8:30am

In Alliance, NE, stands the most strange and wonderful thing you can imagine: Carhenge [1].

[2]

This is what I wrote about Carhenge [3] five years ago:

Carhenge. The product of Jim Reinder's strange and wonderful imagination. Constructed of vintage automobiles sunk into the ground or welded in place, Carhenge was intended as a memorial to Reinder's father and constructed with the help of 35 relatives on the fifth anniversary of the elder Reinder's death. A number of other pieces have sprung up around Carhenge, by Reinders and others, creating the Car Art Preserve, a testimony to both the sacred place the car holds in our American culture and to the strange attraction of "elsewhere" that have drawn people to and through the West since the time of Lewis and Clark. Another sculpture--a mid-70s station wagon with arced ribs welded on reminiscent of the ribs of a Conestoga wagon--drives this point home more forcefully: we Americans, for better and for worse (ask the nearest Indian how s/he feels about the whole thing) are a moving people.


Source URL:
http://www.dwax.org/2008/07/if-youre-ever-nebraska