Cadillac Ranch
— — ten Cadillacs, nose-down in the Texas dirt.
Not only on a wall.
“Ten Cadillacs buried hood-first in a Texas Panhandle field, tail fins angled at the setting sun. The Ant Farm collective planted them in 1974 for the eccentric Amarillo rancher Stanley Marsh 3. Visitors bring spray paint; the cars are repainted by strangers every day. The wind off the Llano Estacado does most of the editing. from the studio
Cadillac Ranch, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Cadillac Ranch sits in a wheat field on the western edge of Amarillo, Texas, along the south frontage road of Interstate 40, the modern alignment of old US Route 66. Ten Cadillac sedans built between 1949 and 1963 are half-buried nose-down in a line, tail fins angled at what is reported to be the same angle as the Great Pyramid of Giza. The installation was created in 1974 by the San Francisco art collective Ant Farm, commissioned by Amarillo rancher and oilman Stanley Marsh 3.
The site is open 24 hours a day, free, with a gravel pullout off Frontage Road. Visitors are not just allowed but expected to spray-paint the cars; cans are sold at gas stations along the interstate, and the surface layer is repainted by strangers every day. The cars were moved two miles west of the original 1974 location in 1997 to escape encroaching Amarillo development. The wind off the Llano Estacado, the high plain west of town, scours the paint chips into drifts at the cars' bases.
The Texas Panhandle gives Cadillac Ranch its photograph. At an elevation of about 3,600 feet, with almost no terrain between the field and the western horizon, the late-afternoon light runs flat across the plain and lights the tail fins from behind. The sky carries the colour: the high plains burn through orange and pink for the twenty minutes before the sun drops. Bruce Springsteen recorded a song named for the site in 1980, on the album The River, which carried the silhouette out into the world.