One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. We’ve all heard that expression before, but when it comes to discarded brake parts, who could possibly see them as treasure? Gregg Murphy can, that’s who. Gregg is one of our Centric employees who works at the Hebron, Kentucky Qualis Automotive facility in Quality Assurance. While most people would see these items as scrap metal, he sees the occasional rejected item and thinks, “That would make a terrific planter!” So rather than scrapping these rejected parts, Gregg started making treasures out of the trash soon after he joined the company in 2004.
As you can see in the photos, he’s been busy – making planters, bookends, clocks, and door stops out of brake drums and rotors among other things. His art has gained quite a following and has even attracted attention from a well-known car guy – Mr. Jay Leno. Gregg sent him a set of rotor bookends a while back and was repaid with an invitation to visit Jay’s garage.
For those who don’t know, Jay’s “garage” is a very well-known but very difficult to get into cluster of warehouses near the Burbank airport. In these massive anonymous buildings Jay keeps and maintains a fleet of over 200 vehicles. They are some of the rarest and most sought-after cars in the world and for any car-lover it is a truly special privilege to be able to see them in person. And now thanks to Gregg, future visitors to the garage will not only see a bunch of legendary automobiles, but they will also get to see the rare and beautiful Qualis bookends that Gregg made for Jay right there among the Porsches, Ferraris, Bugattis and McLarens. And we hear that those bookends will soon be joined by a set of Gregg’s planters too.
But Gregg’s artistic talents are not limited to just discarded brake parts. He also works in paper and plastic from time to time. In fact, Gregg’s latest creation is a set of semi-truck PEZ dispensers with our corporate logos on them. Because you can’t just go out and buy a set of trucks with our logos on them, Gregg purchased several with Ace Hardware logos on them and got to work. He was able to remove the old logos and replace them with our logos before carefully returning the trucks to their boxes and sealing them back up. The result is a set of Centric Parts and Qualis PEZ dispensers that look like they were purchased that way. They’re also a good match for Gregg’s previous truck project, a scale model tractor and triple trailer.
“I’m working on my next project for display here in the QA Lab,” added Gregg, “but it’s a couple months away from completion. When I complete it I’ll send you photos.”
Well done. Gregg! It’s always fun to shine a spotlight on hidden talents within our Centric Parts family. Keep up the great work and let us know when your next creation is ready. In the meantime, we’ll be looking at our trash a lot differently from now on.
Posts
