The DOG POOP Racing Team takes on the Indianapolis Speedrome
From Left to Right: Brent Lehker, Michelle McGuire, Nick Witten, Christian, and Brent Aldrich Photo by Dan Grossman
I stopped by Storage Space Gallery on July 15 on my last day in Indianapolis for a while. The director of the gallery, Brent Lehker, was standing in the driveway when I walked up, along with some of the members of the Dog Poop Racing team including his partner and gallery co-founder Michelle McGuire.
The DOG P00P racers were in the process of modifying a Buick LaCrosse for the Grocery Getter 30-minute enduro, part of an upcoming scheduled event lineup at the Indianapolis Speedrome on Saturday, August 1.
Everybody thinks of the Indy 500 when they think of Indianapolis, but the Speedrome offers a different experience altogether. Think less IndyCar and more Monster Truckz. It’s the oldest operating Figure 8 track in the US, where cars intersect during races.
The Grocery Getter is one of the Indianapolis Speedrome’s most popular events, part of a lineup mixing racing with demolition derby and other automotive chaos. There are detailed rules you must follow if you want to participate. Just for starters, you need to take all glass off your vehicle—including headlights and taillights—except for the front windshield.
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But the DOG POOP racers, after having completed these preliminaries, were in a pickle. The transmission of the Buick was shot; it died during a test drive. To replace it might have taken more time, effort, and—possibly—money that anyone on the team was willing to spend. And though the Grocery Getters guidelines were fairly liberal in terms of what make and model could be used in competition, as long as they were smaller vehicles, any race car would have to be able to move from point A to point B.
“There’ll be other events that are probably more, air quotes legitimate racing,” Lehker told me. “And this is the racing at the end of the night that everybody comes for because it’s funny and ha ha.”
The last car they raced, Dog Poop I, was a Toyota Camry. It was actually their first Grocery Getter Race. For this inaugural race, the Dog Poop crew painted the car in shades of green, pink, and Looney Tunes. That was on May 30. The crew painted Porky Pig on the hood and Road Runner on the right-hand passenger side. During the race the car caught fire but fortunately, Lehker, who was at the wheel, and Allison Baker, associate professor of sculpture at Herron School of Art & Design, escaped unharmed.
Lehker is a 2010 Herron School of Art and Design graduate, sculptor, furniture designer, and jack of all trades. He and Michelle McGuire have been running the Storage Space Gallery out of their oversized garage since 2018. They get far more support from his Midtown community, and community of his fellow artists, than, say, foundational grants.
The POOP crew have art cred—and creds. Other members of this amateur team, in addition to being working artists, have Herron connections as well.
Design by Grif Williams and Nick Whitten
Brent Aldrich is associate faculty at Herron, where he specializes in place-based and relational art practices. Sometimes that means creating a community mural or recreating a menu from a long-gone community diner.
In between deliberating with his fellow DOG POOPers on the fate of the Buick LaCrosse, I found Aldrich inside the gallery, preparing an exhibition.
The show was to take place (already took place) on July 17, featuring artists associated with Herron, which he described as a reunion of sorts. In addition to the work of the artists involved, the gallery got something of a makeover for this event. Aldrich created a recreation/mockup of the Olde Point Tavern, with nachos to be served within on opening night.
After Lehker and Aldrich showed me around the space, we stepped outside again. Around the time that the dinnertime pizza arrived for the DOG P00P crew, they made their decision about the Buick: it was beyond repair, they concluded, even for the purposes of a short race.
Paint the BMW, Bash the Buick
On the gallery opening two nights later, the crew let people draw on the doomed car for $5.00 apiece, as a way to fundraise. Around the same time, with the race day of August 1 at Indianapolis Speedrome quickly approaching, they bought a new car, a 2006 BMW 528i sedan.
“We already started preparing it to be race-ready,” Lehker explained in a text. “We pulled out the safety air bags and the taillights. We will be painting it this week and pulling out the remaining glass and mirrors.”
As far as the Buick is concerned, it will continue to serve the DOG POOP crew in its ongoing demise, before it is towed away for scrap. That is, the pre-race fundraiser at Storage Space on July 31, will include a “Bash the Buick” event from 6 pm-10 pm at Storage Space Gallery at 121 E. 34th Street, Indianapolis. For $5.00, you can join the fun.
“Hopefully the BMW will last for more than just the August 1 race and we can use it for the September 19 race too,” Lehker explained.
Hopefully, it doesn’t catch fire this time around.
