Ford, Chevy, Dodge

Chase Ferguson loves to speed walk around New York City, his eyes glued to the streets, checking out the cars, the buses, the trains. Chase’s solo exhibition Ford, Chevy, Dodge is an ode to the ways we get where we’re going, and the various four-wheeled friends we meet along the way.

Chase, who works at Pure Vision Arts in New York City, makes model cars (and trucks and trains and buses and more) and has since he was 8 years old. Often remembering a vehicle he passed on the street in near perfect detail, he later draws it on paper before transforming the 2D depiction into a 3D sculpture. The process goes: draw, color, cut. Fold it, stuff it, seal it. He’s repeated this ritual over 2,000 times, yielding enough miniature motor vehicles to fill a parking lot. 

Capturing with exactitude the specifics of bona fide motor vehicles, Chase swaps out their hefty, metallic musculature for more pliant paper frames. Cars and their cousins frequently zoom by us in a blur; Chase’s pieces stop traffic and pause time, inviting us to weave through perfectly organized gridlocks. 

Chase often works entirely from memory, meaning every door handle and windshield wiper he encounters and later renders faithfully is stored somewhere in his imagination. He draws without rulers or other tools of measurement, rendering automobiles dissected, flattened and splayed out before folding them up like vehicular origami and sealing them with scotch tape or hot glue. 

For his show at Summertime, Chase will show over 200 vehicles. There are New York legends (Mister Softee truck, taxi cab); pop culture icons (Ghostbusters’ Ectomobile and bus 2857, ridden by Rosa Parks.) There’s also the occasional imaginary cruiser, like the Pirate Van, complete with a massive white sail. 

Chase’s delicate hot rods and fantastical caravans will inspire you to look twice, or three times, or maybe four, before crossing the street. You just might find your next motorized muse.