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Sunday hats
School of Visual Arts Collection. Continuing Education Bulletin cover by Tony Palladino, Fall 1989.
June 26, 2014

Sunday hats

Tony Palladino created this indelible image for a 1989 SVA poster (above on the cover of a Continuing Education bulletin). The Dee Ito-penned tag line, “Even a great idea is only an idea until you make it real,” was used on many subway posters, but I think this is its very best application, where the transformation of the hub cap occurs within the frame of the poster, illustrating process. Palladino loves highlighting found objects in his work, but he is also a sculptor and this one of the few instances where he merged those two modes of creation. We recently scanned a series of slides from the Palladino collection and discovered a number of other hubcaps turned hats.


A photo of a sculpture. It's a outdated hub cap with its center crushed in. It's painted canary yellow and adorned with a red ribbon going around, through the small holes of the hub cap. The hub cap is transformed into a yellow sun hat.


 
Tony Palladino Collection, slide box. Hubcap hat. Undated.

A photo of a sculpture. It's a outdated hub cap with its center pushed outward. The hub cap is painted red and adorned with a yellow metal going around the hub cap.


 
Tony Palladino Collection, slide box. Hubcap hat. Undated.

A photo of a sculpture. It's a outdated hub cap with its center pushed outward. The hub cap is painted scarlet red and has a white line going around and near the border of the hub cap. The hub cap is transformed into a simple fancy sunny hat.


 
Tony Palladino Collection, slide box. Hubcap hat. Undated.

A photo of a sculpture. It's a outdated hub cap with its center crushed in. The border from the underside of the hubcap is pushed outward and is painted white with the front border of the hub cap. Rest of the hub cap is painted a lime green. On the bottom left small plastic grapes adorn the hub cap. The hub cap is transformed into a fancy green sun hat.


 
Tony Palladino Collection, slide box. Hubcap hat. Undated.

A photo of a sculpture. It's a outdated hub cap with its outer border crushed towards the center, giving it folds. The outline of the hub cap's border is painted with a thin blue line, so it the circle drawn in the center of the hub cap. The rest of the hub cap is painted white. The hub cap is transformed into a sailor hat.


 
Tony Palladino Collection, slide box. Hubcap hat. Undated.