American Sculpture in Process: 1930/1970

California Sculpture, Chapter V, page 163

 Fig.21

“Up Tight Out of Sight” wood, leather, fur, 118”x81”x14” 1968

By Wayne Andersen

Operating on the outer fringes of the Hudson Wiley-Geis circle was Don Potts (b.1936), who began making sculpture in the early sixties.  Potts worked with black encaustic in 1964, modeling wall plaques and then massive freestanding sculpture with a distinctive hide-like surface. The following year he became involved with laminated wood and made a series of large, meticulously-crafted pieces in wood and fur, all of which are graphically sexual, generating a kind of bawdy humor but at the same time achieving a sensual beauty of a high order (figure 21). An analogous combination of delicate sensuality and forcefulness governs the project Potts worked on for more than two years—a full-scale dragster chassis, nominally functional, but created principally as an illusion of speed and power (Figure 22)

“My First Car... The Master Chassis” 1970
mixed media p.164 Fig. 22

Potts has been guided mainly by his own ingenuity. Operating outside the conventions of both auto mechanics and sculpture, he has fashioned the chassis from such diverse materials as racing bike wheels, wheelchair spokes, go-cart breaks, surplus valves from F-111 bombers, and a two-cycle aircraft engine with a maximum speed of ten miles per hour. He intends to fabricate a series of bodies in fiberglass and aluminum and to exhibit the finished car in hot rod shows as well as strictly art environments

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