A car lover's personal paradise — Automotive stone sculpture

(August 12, 2016) With more than 200 rare motor vehicles to be on display at The Quail : A Motorsport Gathering on Friday, Aug. 19, during the annual Pebble Beach car week — it just may be Kellen Silverthorn’s 12-piece exhibit of automotive stone sculpture that will make the biggest impact.

The exclusive display, with each of his pieces sculpted from single blocks of the finest quality marble, will incorporate timeless classic automotive forms from seven car-producing nations and will be making its international debut amidst a field of otherwise noted rolling artistry.

According to Silverthorn, a longtime collector of fine art, Stone Sculptures are among the earliest forms of art created by humans. Yet, more than 110 years since the first automotive art exhibits, stone car sculptures are rarely attempted. Silverthorn’s sculpture methods pair iconic automotive designs through the ages with the beauty of natural stone and its infinite variations of color and pattern. All works are commissioned as unique pieces of art, and are a hybrid of old-world craftsmanship and state-of-the-art technology.



“The process is a complete immersion in both the artistic form of the automobile through the ages, and the planet’s endless bounty of elegant stone,” said Silverthorn. “Each work is a stand-alone object of beauty and artistry, just like the exquisite cars they mirror.” Silverthorn states that each individual sculpture has taken countless hours of intricate hand finishing, and painstaking inlays interwoven with the very latest in computer-aided milling robotics.

These 12 works, as rare as the iconic vehicle models they represent, demonstrate the scope of possibilities in the stone sculpture medium. All colors of the rainbow are included in the exhibit, plus black, white, and grey. Sculpture size varies from 21 to 31 inches in length, and 40 to 80 pounds in weight. Striking inlays are used selectively to help capture the essence of the depicted cars, which span from a 1930’s Auto Union Streamliner, to the present day exotic Koenigsegg Regera.

Silverthorn’s body of work proves that not only are automotive stone sculptures possible, but that they are consistently beautiful as well.

“Just like we humans can’t help but stare into campfires, and lose ourselves in fireworks – it’s all too easy to fall into a trance staring into any of these stone sculptures,” said Silverthorn. “My quest is to liberate timeless automotive art forms from stone of distinction.” Each of his sculptures is one-of-one......no car model will ever be repeated in the same stone. Otherwise, any car model, from any era, in any marble is possible.