Michael Cooper solo exhibit at Museum of Sonoma County features pickup turned hot rod

Since his boyhood, Michael Cooper’s driving ambition has been to make art that not only moves people emotionally, but actually moves.

A trim, compact man at age 79, the longtime Sebastopol sculptor and former teacher keeps his comments on his own work rather succinct.

“I love mechanical things. I just like to build things,” he said earlier this week, surrounded by the recently transported and the partly reassembled works to be shown at his new solo exhibit at downtown Santa Rosa’s Museum of Sonoma County opening Saturday.

“I like making work that has multiple parts and things that have metal in it as well as wood,” he explained. “I like the problem-solving as well as the engineering.”

That has led him to create a dragster-like kinetic sculpture such as “Chain Reaction,” which the artist finished last year after two and a half years of work.

Inspired in part by a reproduction of a 1910 Harley Davidson engine that Cooper found fascinating, the piece features 40 feet of chain and wings made of laminated oak that open out on both sides for a span of 11 feet. There’s a cockpit for a driver, but it takes some athletic skill to get in.

“You can put it on, but you have to sort of wear it,” Cooper said.

One of Cooper’s earlier pieces, also included in the exhibit, looks like a basic go-cart.

“I was 13 or 14 when I did this,” Cooper said. “It was before there was such a thing as a go-cart.”

Another piece from 1969 or 1970 looks a like a classic dragster, and it’s simpler than the “Chain Reaction” piece. For the exhibit, it will be suspended from the ceiling.

“It does run, but it never has been driven,” the artist said. “I think it would be dangerous.”

Perhaps the most striking showpiece in the exhibit is “The Tubester” from 2001, an ornate, fire-engine-red 1934 Ford pickup converted into a hot rod, a project that took Cooper eight years to finish.

“I started the hot rod when my dad passed away. You can get in it and drive,” he said. “I’ve got about 1,000 miles on it.”

Cooper doesn’t limit his creations to fanciful road vehicles. The exhibit includes a nearly life-size helicopter, titled “Ride.”

“It will run,” he said. “The prop turns. It doesn’t fly, but it’ll make a heck of a lot of noise.”

During the run of the exhibit, which ends in May 2023, Cooper and the museum plan to present artist talks, including demonstrations with some of the working pieces in the show.

Not every entry in the exhibit has a vehicular theme. One example is “Gun and Curve Perspective” from a series of pieces Cooper created as a statement against gun violence. It looks like a six-shooter, but it’s made entirely of wood, and it’s not functional as a weapon.

“I used to work at my dad’s country store for money for my hobbies,” Cooper recalled. “When I was 16, I got held up at gunpoint.”

Cooper has rarely attempted work that packs a social or political theme, but the exhibit does include one: a mannequin-like male figure in a fragmented business suit, with his feet rooted in an oil-soaked globe.

“It’s my interpretation of what we’re becoming. We don’t use our hands to create things anymore,” the artist said. “It’s really hard to say things like that in a visual piece. I don’t do message pieces anymore. I got frustrated.”

Born in 1943 in Richmond, Cooper spent his childhood years in Lodi and later in the Acampo area.

A longtime Sebastopol resident, he completed his master’s in fine arts degree in sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley in 1969.

He taught art at Foothill-DeAnza College in Cupertino until he retired in 2004 after 34 years of commuting.

Cooper was recognized with a fellowship in sculpture at the American Academy in Rome (1979-80), a fellowship at the Crafts Council of Australia (1979) and a Craftsman’s Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1978). He was elected a Fellow of the American Craft Council in 2016.

Cooper has mounted solo exhibitions at galleries and museums along the West Coast and in Australia. He also has participated in past “Artistry in Wood” exhibitions presented at the Museum of Sonoma County in collaboration with the Sonoma County Woodworkers Association.

“He has had major exhibitions in New York and elsewhere, but he has been locally under-recognized,” said Jeff Nathanson, executive director of the Museum of Sonoma County.

“For me, here was a master of making art,” Nathanson added. “These are remarkable pieces that I wanted to bring to the museum.”

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5243. On Twitter @danarts.