Dominic DeMonico loves travelling through time. His time machine is a combination of imagination, historical research, and a trip to the hardware and craft stores for supplies. From this, he builds his destinations by hand, recreating in mind-boggling detail and scale accuracy miniature buildings that take people to another time.
“I think most people have a sense of nostalgia for the times and places they grew up in,” said Dominic. “This seems especially true of car guys, but I think it can be said of any number of people.”
As a car guy though, Dominic leans to the motor nostalgic – gas stations and service garages, dealership showrooms and racetracks. He’ll locate a dealership with a unique design, normally of the Googie nature or maybe a serious sense of history, such as the Findlay Oldsmobile dealership in Las Vegas, Nevada or Yenko Chevrolet in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and opt to recreate it in stunning detail. Or maybe it’s an old gas station combined with a service station just for some common joinery.
“I use basswood, artboard, and acrylic to build the structures,” he said. “I design and print all the graphics myself, like the gas station logos or the windows on the gas pumps, anything like that I design and print on the computer. Anything that needs painting I do by hand. The whole process is very time consuming, but it’s also very fun. It’s also very satisfying because these buildings really do take people back to another time and place.”
It also demands huge attention to detail.
“When it comes time to build a model, I think it’s important to pay attention to everything. Nothing can really be overlooked. The Gould Chrysler dealership, for example,” he says. “The front uses a lot of glass centered by a rock wall. The roof is a twin cantilevered design known as the ‘Flying V,’ with blue tiles that match the blue-and-white checkerboard tile floor inside which all ties with the lettering on the dealership sign that would have sat by the sidewalk which is anchored by a blue planter box. The bricks, the rocks, the tiles, they all need to be carved to shape. The little vending machines inside need to be colored and labeled like a real vending machine would. The walls inside that are not glass would have been that fake wood paneling that was so popular in the late 1960s through the 1980s, so that needs to be figured out. It’s a lot of fun deciding how I’m going to create these things, what’s going to give the most authentic look.”
And then there’s the illumination.
“A lot of the buildings need lighting,” he said. “LED lighting makes it easier, and it’d be criminal to build some of these buildings without it because it adds so much to the look, especially at night. Having one of these on a bookshelf or on a table at night in a dimly lit room is really fantastic. It’s not that it is so bright, but there is a unique vibe that comes from them.”
While the majority of Dominic’s creations come from his own interests and inspiration, he is often given a commission to build.
“I’ve built a few buildings for people who know exactly what they want,” he said. “They have pictures or links to websites where pictures can be seen, where I can get a sense of what the building looked like to recreate it.”
Interestingly, he’s not yet been asked to build straight from scratch, right out of his imagination.
“There are so many great buildings out there, I think most people really like seeing what’s familiar,” he said.
Case in point, the R.O. Gould Chrysler dealership again. A building in Long Beach, California, Dominic had his model for sale on eBay and it was snapped up by a Long Beach city council member. Historically significant for the city, it helped sustain the Googie architecture Long Beach builders were bringing and further established the city as a hub for modern automobile dealerships. The original building was completed in 1963 and served as the Ray Vines Chrysler dealership and was later turned into the R.O. Gould Chrysler dealership and is currently being used as a sushi restaurant and car wash having been saved from demolition.
“It was very cool to see it go to someone with such a vested interest in the city from which it came,” Dominic said. “That’s part of the fun of this work, watching the models go to someone for whom it’s important.”
Dominic also has a vested interest.
“Through my art, I strive to preserve the memory of these buildings as an Automotive Memorabilia Artist,” he said. “Often times they hold architectural significance, some don’t, but all of them have an important place in American history. I think these models bring back good, positive memories of the era for a lot of people.”
Seems to be a simple exercise of going back in time. Learn more about Dominic and his scale creations here.
