Art Walk Sept. 12 offers focus on future
From our weekly issue dated September 3, 2008
Jack McCornack with a fuel-efficient Kubota diesel. (Photo provided)
It’s back-to-school month, and September’s Second Friday Art Walk in Downtown Cave Junction will look to the future by featuring two special persons: a young artist and a seasoned inventor.
The featured artist for Sept. 12 is Inka Rein Jungwirth, 19, from Williams. A graduate of Hidden Valley High School, she won 1stt place in the schoolwide Spring Art Show each of her four years. She also won the Josephine County Artists Association scholarship in 2007.
Since then, Inka has taken the opportunity to travel to Norway and Guatemala to visit family and friends and increase her fluency in Norwegian and Spanish.
Click here to learn more about how you can tell us what you think
She will attend the Oregon College of Arts & Crafts in Portland in the fall, and plans to apprentice with an artist and work in her own family’s business during the off-months. She hopes to further develop her artistic skills in order to build a career in the field.
Inka works with a variety of media including chalk pastel, colored pencil, block prints and even bicycle inner tubes. She draws artistic inspiration from areas including societal norms, political issues and human interactions. Her scholarship-winning drawing depicts an African father and child as they are confronted by the specter of starvation. It will be displayed along with other works at Community Media and Education Center, 140-C S. Redwood Hwy. during September.
Art Walk will celebrate the Art of Invention with featured guest Jack McCornack. An inveterate “tinker” of alternative vehicles, he is the owner of Illinois Valley-based Kinetic Vehicles, which supplies parts for lightweight do-it-yourself sports cars.
Advertisement:
McCornack has teamed with Mother Earth News to build “MAX” – the national magazine’s challenger for the “Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize.” The goal of the X Prize Foundation is to spark “revolution through competition” by offering $10 million to whomever can build a 100-mile-per-gallon car that’s practical and feasible for mass-production.
Although employing recycled materials is not a stated goal of the contest, McCornack has raised the bar by choosing a turbo-charged 1100cc Kubota diesel engine and a “Locost” frame for the prototype with the axles, wheels and other running gear recycled from a Toyota station wagon.
After casting and machining a Kubota-to-Toyota engine-to-transmission adapter; he believes that he’s well on his way to creating a 100 mpg sports car with an engine that will last half a million miles.
Besides designing and building the car, McCornack will report on his progress in Mother Earth News beginning with an article in this month’s issue. Interested readers can also follow this story on the magazine’s Website, as well as at kineticvehicles.com.
McCornack and his assistants -- Leroy Clouser, Jacky Leggitt, Dave Levison and Sharon Westcott -- are building two different vehicles for this international competition slated to take place in 2009. As well as high-mileage vehicles, Kinetic makes high-performance sports cars, and both will be displayed at Subway Restaurant from 5 to 8 p.m. during Second Friday Art Walk on Sept 12.
Illinois River Valley Arts Council sponsors Second Friday Art Walk, with the support of Evergreen Federal Bank, Cabin Chemistry, Jefferson State Financial Group, and R. H. Ziller & Co. Visit www.irvac.com for further information.
