A Chat With The Artist- Sharon Zigrossi of Blooming Hubcaps

March 02, 2016

We get a lot of questions about where the cars end up after our buyers have paid for them and towed them away. Sometimes, our fine four-fendered friends are crushed up into steel squares, other times they’re fixed up and re-sold. Sometimes they’ll be parted out, but what happens to the parts that make no sense to re-sell? Do they just sit on the side of the road or in a junk yard until they disintegrate? Or does someone so awesomely creative it’s mind blowing come along and make their mark?

Usually, it’s that second one.

Meet Sharon Zigrossi. This fabulous lady from Texas was featured on our blog in August for her one-of-a-kind hubcaps. We recently got to sit down and discuss her work and background a bit more, and she is just as awesome as her art. A trained artist with a BS in Design, her creativity knows no bounds. When she first found a hubcap, the Master Gardener’s eye was immediately drawn to the flower shape. Soon, her Blooming Hubcaps (no, not blooming onions, though those are pretty amazing as well) became a beautiful garden of flowers for her yard! Her work quickly became high in demand, so she started her Etsy Shop where she creates custom hubcaps and others of her own design. At first, they were meant to just be decorations for your lawn, but over six years they have slowly evolved to beautiful, sculptural pieces meant for your home or office.

Of course, we had to ask her what her favorite car is. She absolutely loved her Lexus RS 230, but didn’t really have a favorite. For some strange reason, we imagined her driving a Flower-Powered Beetle with the most amazing hubcaps we’ve ever seen, and it turned out that her first family car was a ’68 VW Beetle! And if it wasn’t that, we imagined a VW Microbus, complete with peace-sign drapes and shag carpet.

As you can see, she doesn’t just slap on some paint and call it a masterpiece. Cleaning the hubcaps is absolutely necessary and takes up a good portion of time, depending on the amount of crud that has been caked on. After all that nastiness is gone, she begins her (usually custom) artwork. The paint, of course, is a large part of it, but these recycled beauties are also embellished with bottle caps, nails, and sometimes even pistachio shells!

Since you never know just quite what you’ll need for the next project when you’re a “junk artist”, she has lots of fun embellishments that are just DYING to be used. She tells us she has hundreds of hubcaps in big black trash bags, but her favorites are the old metal ones from the good old days. This Caprice hubcap was inspired by the mosaic design you see behind it. We absolutely love that she kept “Caprice” and embellished the rest of the hubcap.

If you’re dying for one of her Blooming Hub Caps like we are, visit her ever-growing Etsy page. She’s always creating new pieces, so check back often!