Condolences pour in at news Vancouver artist, art-car maker, and assembler extraordinaire Ken Gerberick has died
Fascinated with collecting auto parts, he showed everywhere from grunt gallery to the Eastside Culture Crawl
Ken Gerberick. Photo by Art Perry
VANCOUVER HAS lost one of its most wildly creative and beloved artists, the collector and assembler extraordinaire Ken Gerberick.
An icon in the city’s thriving low-brow movement, he showed at 12 Midnite’s SMASH Gallery, Hot Art Wet City, the Eastside Culture Crawl. and grunt gallery over the years. Gerberick was known for turning everything from salvaged hubcaps to tail lights into funny and intricate sculptures and assemblages that also had deeper messages about consumerism.
Many Vancouverites know him for his wildly embellished art cars, vehicles tricked out with all manner of found objects. He built 11 of them in all.
"Art Cars were a logical step in my art process. As a child I didn't know if I wanted to be an artist or run an auto junkyard. I drew and painted cars, and when I began doing assemblage art I used pieces from my ‘yard sculpture’ and parts from car crushers or scrap car haulers,” he once wrote. “I had never heard of an 'Art Car' when I began the Emblem Car in early 1990; it was just a large sculpture I decided to do. An artist friend, Jim Christy, got me in contact with the Orange Show in Houston in 1994. Since then I've made three more art cars (specifically to drive to Houston) and a 5th (the Dada Car) as a daily driver which has also made it to Seattle and San Francisco."
Ken Gerberick hailed from St. Louis, and studied Art at Forest Park College in the 1960s before heading to San Francisco. In 1969 he moved to Vancouver Island, where he built a cabin surrounded by his first site-specific automotive installation. “In 1970 I began a 1 acre Forest Installation of twenty-two 20’s - 50’s antique cars and 1000’s of car parts,” he wrote of it. “I built a cabin, garages, and outbuildings reminiscent of the Ozarks, remembered from childhood. It still exists and is being reclaimed by Mother Nature at a rather active rate.”
The Dada Car. Photo by Philo Northrup, Art Car Fest 2000
Gerberick later moved to Victoria to study with Jack Wise at Victoria College of Art, and in 1984 he relocated to Vancouver and opened KRAK studio on East Hastings Street, where he worked on large mixed-media canvases, found-object assemblages, and neon installations.
Of his assemblages, Gerberick wrote, “My art is often about consumerism and the medium IS the message as I use mainly discarded, broken or obsolete found objects.”
The KRAK studio was lost to fire in 2004. Since then, Gerberick and his colourful assortment of salvaged bits relocated to Hungry Thumbs Studio at 233 Main Street. The artmaker of more than 75 years appeared reguarly on the Eastside Culture Crawl.
He’s survived by Janis Corrado, who describes herself on the Crawl website as his “studio / life partner, collaborator, collector, and adventurer”, as well as kids Liam and Ingrid. No cause of death has yet been released.
Condolences and memories of the artist are rolling out on social media.
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