Since the 1990s, Cadillac Ranch has welcomed both professional and amateur graffiti artists to make their mark on the 10 Cadillac tail fins sticking out of the ground. The Amarillo installation’s resulting shells of hardened paint inspired Bob “Crocodile” Lile, an artist hailing from Booker, to uncover their layers and make jewelry highlighting the cross sections of hues hidden within.
“It took three months to make the first piece of jewelry because I had no idea what I was doing,” the Amarillo-based artist says. Now, 13 years into making jewelry, his gallery on historical Sixth Avenue—Amarillo’s stretch of Route 66—sells a regular selection of earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and other accessories that showcase swirls of color.
“This stuff has a mind of its own,” he says of the material he calls “Cadilite,” inspired by “Fordite” made from automobile paint found in car factories. Lile slices into the chunks of dried spray paint to reveal their layers, then grinds and sands them until the intricate patterns arrange themselves to his liking. But while Fordite is made of “good lacquered enamel,” Lile says, “Cadilite is cheap Krylon or Walmart paint,” making it more difficult to manipulate. He never knows what he’ll find when he’s done, as no two chunks of paint are alike.
This is due to the haphazard, communal nature of the art installation, which Lile first encountered in the ’70s. Back then, the cars were blank frames poking out of the dirt; visitors didn’t start tagging the Cadillacs with spray paint until the ’90s. Lile has painted them himself a few times over the years, but he’s long preferred transforming the paint into art once it’s dried. Before he started making jewelry, he crafted mosaic interpretations of Cadillac Ranch, starting with the landscape and layering images of the cars using the paint chips.
For Lile, these Cadilite pieces offer a way for visitors to bring home a piece of Route 66, as are the original paintings he’s created showcasing each of the eight states along the route for its 100th anniversary. He has worked on the Mother Road for three decades, and for the past 13 years he’s guided global travelers on road trips from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, semiannually for New Zealand-based Gilligans Tours.
“Route 66 is some of the best American history there is,” he says. “To get to share that with people who aren’t really familiar with it, it’s just a magical thing.”
