“Cars and art have always been part of my life,” says Jim Cohoe, who, like others raised in Michigan, considers himself a car guy.

As a child, he customized his bicycles to look cool and as a teenager hung out at local gas stations after school, plopping peanuts in his Coca Cola bottle and talking cars with his buddies, and he also enjoys attending autocrosses, drag races and sports car races.

There was also, however, a softer, artistic side to life in Detroit, where his father was a watercolor artist and other family members were painters and museum docents.

Although Cohoe is now a well-regarded potter, Vero Beach 32963 wrote about his first artistic passion – fine art photography – five years ago. He began to dabble in photography in the 1960’s, and had pieces accepted into juried exhibits at Michigan’s Flint Institute of Arts, but didn’t begin to seriously pursue it until he took some classes in Vero Beach.

“I wasn’t able to hone into my artistic skills until later in life. My wife and I started spending winters in Vero Beach about 25 years ago and I started taking classes at the Vero Beach Museum of Art,” says Cohoe, who moved here permanently about eight years ago.

“What really ignited my creative fire was a photography class I took with Aric Attis at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. We would take photos and then critique them in class. Attis described my photos in ways I didn’t understand at first, until it dawned on me that he was reading me based on my photographs,” says Cohoe.

“It was then that I realized that if you are into art, you are expressing yourself through your art. It could be any medium – music, brush, clay. It was an awakening to me.”

He had great success with his photography, gaining recognition and having his work shown in several national shows, including at the iconic Soho Gallery in New York City.

“As I grew older, photography was getting physically demanding. I also found myself competing with younger people at juried art shows who were intuitively more adept at different photography apps. I found myself working extra hard just to keep up,” says Cohoe.

“For recreation I started working with my hands in clay and it felt good.”

Working in clay offered another way to express himself artistically and he spent several years studying various techniques and developing a style that harkened back to his Michigan days.

“My love of cars shows in my clay art,” says Cohoe.

“Sometimes, it’s subtle and sometimes it smacks you in the face. My tall floor or garden vases are reminders of the sensual lines we see on European sports cars like the Jaguar XKE. The lines of some of my vases are also similar to the sweeping curves on the Art Deco vehicles recently shown at the Vero Beach Museum of Art,” he explains.

“The smacks-you-in-the-face part shows up big in my mechanical clay works. I show designer nuts and bolts. A big old clay nut with a beautiful floral arrangement in it makes a whole new statement for the dining room table.”

Cohoe often uses coils to shape his garden vases, similar to the way it has been done for thousands of years. Occasionally he will sketch out his ideas and other times he just allows the clay to progress on its own.

“One of the beauties of working with clay is that a sculpture often takes on a life of its own and evolves into something different along the way. I like to work freehand and make changes throughout the process.”

Cohoe’s nuts, bolts and other mechanically themed pieces are primarily worked as slab pottery. In that process, the clay is laid out flat on a machine with slab rollers that allow it to be uniformly cut as thick or thin as he wants. Once it’s sliced to the desired thickness, Cohoe cuts it into whatever shape he wishes, molding the clay into his own unique creation.

“I like to have fun with people’s eyes,” he says, explaining that he often likes to make his bolts off center, in a fashion that would render them totally useless in their intended life.

“But people who are a bit quirky or off-centered relate to this and find it amusing.”

Also in keeping with his car guy image, Cohoe often finishes his pieces with red and burnt umber oxides to give a metallic or rusty metal appearance, using glazes with names such as ancient copper and bronze temmoku. Other times he prefers to not glaze the piece, letting it take on its natural hues during a second firing.

These days, Cohoe can be found playing with clay at Indian River Clay nearly every afternoon, after a rousing game of pickleball or morning walk with his wife.

“I enjoy pushing myself and stretching my creativity,” he says.

“I like building something that nobody else has. This is strictly a hobby for me, and I make it for my own self-satisfaction. If it sells, that’s fine, but if it doesn’t, I’ll take it over to the Humane Society thrift shop and let them sell it.”

Cohoe has exhibited his ceramics in juried shows locally and has received multiple awards in the 3D/sculpture categories in the Vero Beach Art Club’s Art by the Sea show at the Vero Beach Museum of Art and the Best of the Best show at the Backus Museum and Gallery in Fort Pierce. He collaborated on several sculptures with fellow potter Mallory Wixson-O’Malley including for this past spring’s Yours, Mine and Ours exhibition at Raw Space Gallery, and their joint piece, Metallica, was accepted into the juried show Treasure Coast Creates: A Tribute to Local Artists, currently on display at the VBMA.

In November, Cohoe will be showcasing his nuts and bolts sculptures and garden vases at Gallery 14, with the preview occurring during the Nov. 3 First Friday Art Stroll.

Photos by Joshua Kodis