Car as Art

"My fantasy was to make the ultimate vehicle for a mariachi," Blank says about his creation, "Pico de Gallo," which is a red Volkswagen Beetle festooned with keyboards, drums, guitars, horns, a banjo, maracas, trumpets and various other instruments — many of which are connected to a stereo amplifier in the back of the car. Pico de Gallo is what's called an interactive art car. All of the instruments work, and Blank encourages onlookers to grab a drumstick, strum the mandolin or jump on the small stage on the car's roof (best done while the car is not in transit). Other examples of interactive art cars are Write On (a Toyota Corolla converted to a mobile chalkboard) and TV Truck (a truck with multiple working television sets facing the road).

Take a 1971 Cadillac hearse, add a Volkswagen Beetle to the top, use fiberglass to create flying buttresses, gargoyles and a bell tower, and you have "Carthedral" — a masterpiece by Rebecca Caldwell, whose artistic inspiration is Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. Carthedral features candelabras, toy skeletons, a catacomb, stained glass windows (most of them obtained at garage sales, flea markets and thrift stores) and a stereo system that occasionally pipes organ music. Caldwell removed the roof of the hearse and the floor of the Beetle, so the interior of Carthedral is, well, cathedral-like — you can stand up in it. All told, it's nearly 13 feet tall and weighs in at 7,500 pounds (which doesn't make for stellar gas mileage — just 11 mpg).

Many artists use older or vintage cars, but Philo Northrup, co-director of the Art Car Fest in Berkeley, Calif., started with a brand-new Honda Element to make "Daisy Singer." "Using an old car is kind of like going to the pound and adopting a 12-year-old dog," Northrup says. In other words, you won't be able to drive it for very long — which is a problem considering it's meant to be a wandering art exhibit. Northrup likes the Element because it has a lot of surface area, but when he started out, he wasn't sure what he'd do with all the space. "I tend to riff off the materials I have," he says. In this case, the materials include an old Singer sewing machine treadle, a Daisy stove door, tin, linoleum and bighorn sheep antlers.

Ripper began life as a 1982 Nissan Sentra, and after several years of work and many layers of polyurethane, the late artist Tom Kennedy had created an icon of the art-car world. Ripper, which mimics the shark in "Jaws" by opening and closing its massive maw and swishing its tail, has been to most art car festivals in the U.S., and it's a popular participant in the annual Burning Man Festival in the Nevada desert. Ripper was the first of Kennedy's 30 art cars, which include "Whale Car," "One-Eyed Wonder," "Hippopatomobile" and "Topsy Turvy" (one school bus stacked upside down on top of another, commissioned by ice-cream company Ben & Jerry's).

Virginia-based sculptor AJ Strasser invested 2,000 hours of work and the body of his Toyota truck in this art-car project, called "Art the Lobster." Fiberglass shell, polyurethane foam and sculpted wood give the impression of a gigantic lobster riding on top of the truck (Art is 35 feet long). Art has become a fixture at Baltimore's annual Artscape festival, which has been putting art cars on display for the past 15 years. The Red Lobster restaurant chain liked Art so much that it commissioned an even larger lobster from Strasser named Clawde the Lobster. Clawde, a 40-foot, 3,000-pound fiberglass crustacean atop a Ford F-350 truck, traveled the country in 2000 raising money for the Special Olympics.

Kelly Lyles' first art car happened almost accidentally. "I bought a Ford Pinto, and I was mortified to be seen in it, so I took it to a body shop and had them paint it to look like a horse," the Seattle-based painter says. She drove "Pinto Pinteau" for 10 years before moving on to "Leopard Bernstein" (named for a stuffed animal she had as a child). Lyles and her then-boyfriend transformed a 1989 Subaru in just a weekend — he painted a snow leopard face on the hood of the car and she painted the spots. The aluminum ears came later (courtesy of a body shop in Oregon that does pro bono work on art cars), as did the tail. Lyles then proceeded to collect and affix 700-plus jungle-cat figurines to the body and interior of the car.

A car that wears lipstick and has a nose ring is what Shelley Buschur has created in "Eelvisa." Her original concept was to make an eel and give it an Elvis persona, but she ended up going a more feminine route and channeling an Elvis fan. The 1983 Mazda pickup truck that Buschur began with is now completely unrecognizable — in its place is a papier-mâché, green female face on the hood; an enormous, brightly colored eel body with a red fin (think traditional fin, not car fin); and a tail that swings back and forth. Eelvisa falls into the suspension-of-disbelief category of art cars (you would have a hard time recognizing it as a car if it wasn't moving), and has made a splash at numerous art-car festivals. Buschur's first art car had a giant breast on the roof — Eelvisa's a bit more PG-13 in comparison.

A tribute to the 1960s singer Tiny Tim, famous for the song "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," this 1965 Dodge Dart experienced a massive overhaul at the hands of art-car artist Dean Pauley. Pauley shortened the car by more than three feet, cut it in half and reassembled it u-joint to u-joint. Then he hand-painted the tulips. The car is named for Tiny Tim's first wife, Vicky, whom he married on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" in 1969. Pauley had the honor of having Tiny Tim get behind the wheel of "Miss Vicky" in 1995 at the Soulard Mardi Gras parade in St. Louis.

Find more pictures of art cars on Bing

On the more extreme end of the art-car spectrum is "Draka," a massive dragon that spews flames (real ones), and has become a fixture at the Burning Man Festival and the Houston Art Car Parade, which is the biggest art-car fest of the year. Draka measures 112 feet by 40 feet by 22 feet, and it's made of steel, wood, cedar shingles and fabric. Draka is a party van of sorts — inside it has a bar, seating and enough space for 100 revelers. Artist Lisa Nigro built Draka in 2000, the Chinese year of the golden dragon.

The first step in creating "Magic City Golden Transit" was to glue 1,000 sheets of gold leaf paper to the body. Artist Armor Keller started the project in secret while living in Birmingham, Ala., in the late 1980s. "One day I just rolled it out and shocked everybody I knew," she has said. Like many art-car artists, she kept working on it — when your canvas is your primary mode of transport, you can't always wait until you're finished to debut it. Keller added a mirror mosaic to the exterior and pieces of jewelry, gold coins and Barbie doll shoes to the inside of the Subaru. Keller extends the car theme to her other artwork, which includes a collection of miniature automobiles and a series of hubcaps decorated with glass shards and computer parts. Magic City Golden Transit now lives at the Art Car World Museum in Douglas, Ariz.

Claire Martin has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Outside magazine. She's the former deputy editor of Men's Journal and currently lives in Los Angeles, where she covers technology, travel and food.

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