The Cupertino Courier

Education

Photograph by Kelly Hsiao

Steering Committee: Fremont High School students (from left) Spencer Cook, Stephanie Ma and Binh Hoang join teacher Bill Wishart (center), artist Abraham Ortega and West Valley College student Kayvon Shakeri at the unveiling of '48 Chevy Fleetline, a table with electric lifts, at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San Jose.

Students were driven to create unique car table

By ERIN HUSSEY

There's more than just computers, periodicals and shelves of books inside the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in downtown San Jose.

On the lower level is a canary-yellow reading chair. There are brilliantly colored cast metal monarch butterflies on the walls of the fourth floor. And, on the third floor behind the nonfiction section, there are three unusual tables, including one that looks like the hood of an old '40s Chevy.

"The design was something that I had in mind already," says Abraham Ortega, a tattoo artist at Lucky Star's Tattoo Studio in San Jose.

Ortega's low-rider-inspired table design, complete with an electric hydraulic system, was handmade by Fremont High School Automotive Technology (FHAT) students and their teacher Bill Wishart.

"I knew Bill was a good fabricator and he's a good friend of mine, so when he told me about having his classes work on the project, I thought it was a cool idea," says Ortega. "It came out almost exactly like my design."

Ortega's design was one of three chosen from a national contest sponsored by San Jose Public Art (SJPA).

The three tables: East Side Story, a chopped down bicycle supporting a table detailed with stories from San Jose's East Side, Table of Milagros which incorporates thousands of Latin American traditional charms and Ortega's '48 Chevy Fleetline, are collectively titled Raza Writers.

The three tables complete the 34-piece permanent collection called Recolecciones--memories--at the MLK Library.

"All of the pieces are adjacent to specific book collections and are meant to move people through the library and invoke curiosity," says Mary Rubin, SJPA project manager.

When artist Mel Chin was commissioned by the SJPA to create a piece of artwork for the library, he came up with a less traditional approach. Instead of designing one piece, he wanted to create a number of pieces that would pay homage to the library's diverse collections and communities who use MLK.

"He went out into the community and talked with a number of people to help develop his concepts," says Rubin.

For example, a community forum where Chin asked participants what their favorite book was, inspired the Sour Grapes piece found on the sixth floor in the business and economics section.

The sculpture can be interpreted as simply the grapes from the famous Aesop's fable or as a sly comment on the early agricultural economy of San Jose, the data-harvesting economy that has replaced it or deals gone sour.

Raza Writers was also inspired in a similar way.

But instead of creating the tables himself, Chin encouraged others to design them.

"The really wonderful thing about Abraham's work is that he did get the Fremont High School kids involved," says Rubin.

Ortega's table, which seats four comfortably, has vintage Firestone white-wall tires for legs, chrome finishes and a shiny black paint job that practically sparkles.

"We pretty much put it together from scratch," says Binh Hoang, a senior at Fremont.

With the help of Wishart, the students measured, bent and cut all the exterior and interior metal pieces, welded them together, added the chrome accents, constructed the electrical hydraulic wiring and sanded it.

The table, which took the students less than three months to complete, was then sent to a custom body shop in San Jose to be painted.

"It took a lot of imagination," says Wishart, who has been teaching at Fremont for eight years.

Ortega's drawing, which included three different views of the table, was fairly simple. "We had the drawing next to us while we were working, but that's about it."

The Raza Writers exhibit officially opened May 8 at the library.

All three tables are functional and can be used for studying and/or reading.

"People have this mental block that if you take auto mechanics, that must mean that you're going to become a mechanic," says Wishart.

"But the idea with the project was to show students that you can take the skills you learn in this class and apply them to different fields."

For more information about the Recolecciones exhibit in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, visit www.sjlibrary.org/mlkart/index.htm.

Informational brochures about the exhibit are also available at the library's informational desk.