Rural roots and Pittsburgh vibes crash together for demolition derby artist
Artist Jason Sauer makes sculptures from the wreckage of his demolition derby cars.
Some of Jason Sauer’s finest art winds up spewing gasoline or getting crushed. Sometimes, it all bursts into flames. The raucous crowds love that, and Sauer, 49, doesn’t mind, either.
By the end of a demolition derby, Sauer’s passions can look like piles of twisted junk, bound for the scrapyard. Sometimes, those gnarled heaps wind up back on his lot in Pittsburgh’s Garfield neighborhood and, more often than not, they become art again. They might wind up as an installation at a cocktail party in Miami or the Hamptons.
Sauer said his art isn’t art at all until it is destroyed.
“So how it starts is we buy a car and paint it, then we wreck it in a derby, then we pull the parts off and they become sculptures,” he said at his Most Wanted Fine Art compound. “I love the idea of smashing a painting. I love the idea of it being in the moment, and you have to be there to see before it changes.”
Joe Sapienza II, a Philadelphia-based documentarian, spent years making Art of Destruction, a series about Sauer and the Most Wanted Fine Art crew. Sapienza, who works for NFL Films, is about to start filming the second season of the series and hopes to sell it all to a streaming service.
“Jason is a very talented individual and he’s combining worlds that few people have done,” Sapienza said recently.
Sauer grew up in rural Mercer County, Pa., 70 miles north of Pittsburgh. His family was in the junk business and his mother baked cakes.
“I grew up in the junkyard but I think the artistic side came from the cakes,” he said.
Every year in Mercer County, the Great Stoneboro Fair was a magical bookend to summer, and it’s where Sauer fell in love with demolition derby. He believes it’s a form of rural folk art, something wholly American, and he’s made money spray-painting derby cars in colors far wilder than the typical matte black you find at most events.
“I think demolition derby is more American than rodeo,” he told The Inquirer at the Stoneboro Fair in 2023. “It’s more American than jazz.”
Sauer, a U.S. Army veteran, studied art history at Edinboro University, then earned an MFA at Marywood University, and went on to teach art at the Community College of Allegheny County. For years, he and his wife operated a gallery in Pittsburgh’s art district on Penn Avenue.
“I provided a stage for anything that needed a stage,” he said.
Sauer’s compound sits on a hilly street in Pittsburgh’s Garfield section, with views of the city’s downtown through the bare trees. It’s the opposite of the Hamptons. A sticker-bombed 1977 Chrysler station wagon as big as a boat sits parked in the yard. The car was featured at the Museum of Graffiti in Miami.
“This is one of the last of the big ones they built in Detroit,” he said of the car.
Chickens are running in Sauer’s yard, a duct-taped punching bag hangs from a steel beam, and Big Yavo’s “Like This” plays in the narrow studio where his colorful steel paintings hang. He lives there with his wife, Nina, and his son, Rowdy.
Sauer’s lot is a community center of sorts for people interested in art and work, and the rare breed who want to put on a helmet and smash cars, like T.Y. McLelland. He provides jobs for locals through his landscaping and contracting side hustles, and scholarships for local art students.
“I won’t give up my side hustles just yet,” Sauer said.
In Pittsburgh, Sauer partnered with McLelland and the BOOM Black Demolition Derby to introduce more inner-city residents to the mayhem that takes place all over America, every summer. He also started the Most Wanted Fine Art (MWFA) Street Stock Class to get beginners into the sport, in cars that are mostly stock aside from the wild paint jobs. Some derby classes feature fortified machines in which drivers invested tens of thousands of dollars.
‘The people, the smashing, the cars. I love all of it,” McLelland said.
Sauer’s paintings and sculptures sell for anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000 and he doesn’t get sentimental about letting them go.
“I have the heart of an artist,” he said. “I love it as I’m doing it, and when I’m done, I’m like ‘Oh, I could have done it better.’”
There may come a day when art sales allow Sauer to shed some of the side hustles, but for now, he’s constantly touring, towing, and hauling his art around the country. Oddly, there’s not much demolition derby culture in the Philadelphia area but Sauer’s open to crashing cars there.
“Find me a track or a place to drive in Philly,” he said. “I’ll get 60 cars there and we’ll smash them up. I think Philly would like that.”