Calvin student's unusual art project
Although Commencement at Calvin College is May 23, one Calvin College senior has a different graduation date.
Gary DeWitt is an art major from Oregon, Wis., and this school year he has devoted much of his time to his senior project. In fact, he took a normal load of classes first semester, but took no classes second semester as he turned his project into an independent study -- the last credit he needed to graduate.
On Friday, May 8, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., he will be part of the Calvin Bachelor of Arts Senior Exhibition Reception where his work will be displayed for the first time. And that event will mark, for De Witt, his graduation day.
De Witt says that the drive from his house in the Easttown neighborhood to Calvin may, in fact, be as much a graduation ceremony as anything that follows.
That's because, if all goes as planned, De Witt will be driving his senior art project to its spot in the Calvin Art Gallery. You see, De Witt built a car to graduate -- a starting-from-scratch, form-follows-function, 60-miles-per-gallon, environmentally-friendly, three-wheeled, one-person car!
And on Friday, May 8 it will sit in the Center Art Gallery at Calvin with all of the other senior projects -- Gary De Witt's testament to art, creativity, ingenuity and childhood dreams.
The vehicle has a 150 cc water-cooled motorcycle engine at its core. It has a foam composite body that De Witt constructed from scratch. It has headlights, windshield wipers, carpet, a heating system and more. And its tear-drop-shaped frame measures just four feet wide, four feet tall and eight feet long. It fits, De Witt says, "in the back of my Ford Econoline van."
Everything on the vehicle is salvaged; many of the parts come from the local junkyards that De Witt now knows so well. "I wanted it to be environmentally friendly," he says. Perhaps it's no surprise that De Witt's father, Dr. Cal De Witt, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, is one of the nation's leading Christian environmentalists. In fact, on May 23 he will be honored at Calvin's Commencement as one of two 1998 Calvin College Distinguished Alumni Award honorees.
Gary De Witt figures he's spent about $2,000 on the vehicle as a result of his junkyard forays. And time? "I've worked solid on it since August," he says. "For the first few months I worked about 20 hours per week. The last six weeks or so it's been about 40 or 50 hours per week."
When asked when he started thinking about making a car De Witt says that he has an 8th-grade sketchbook with pictures that look a lot like this car. "I always wanted to make a car," he says. He's already dreaming about making a bigger one. And then, perhaps, a submarine.
