Art Car Caravan

We just got back from participating in the SW Art Car Caravan from Los Angeles, CA to Douglas, AZ. What an adventure! The Cadwac, our art car, had been with my brothers in Southern California for the past year so our friend Mark drove us out to pick it up. We tried to get there in time for the first event of the Caravan, an artwalk in Santa Ana, CA. Unfortunately, when we got to my brother's house, the battery on the Cadwac was dead and we couldn't revive it in time for the show.

We spent the next two days re-painting and adding art to the car. We also got the battery charged, all the fluids topped off, and got it ready to go on a long trip. The first event the Cadwac could make it to was on Tuesday night at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. About eight art cars were present for that event. The cars were displayed in front of the museum's entrance which is in their parking garage.One of the purposes for the caravan was for the organizer, Harrod Blank, to screen his new documentary about art cars. At each major stop a film screening was scheduled.

The next stop was the True World Gallery in Joshua Tree, CA. During the day we toured interesting sites around Joshua Tree. The most interesting, to me, was Noah Purifoy's art environment. It consisted of sculptures and building all made out of junk. We also did a photo shoot at Giant Rock. Giant Rock is supposedly a place where UFO's are seen often. It's a beautiful spot to shoot pictures. In the evening, Harrod's movie, Automorphosis, was shown at the True World Gallery. Afterwards we went out to a campground for the night.

In the morning we drove through Joshua Tree National Monument. On the way there, we stopped by the studio of metal, and junk, artist, Bobby Furst. His studio was amazing! He had such a delicious collection of objects all fairly neatly organized. What an inspiring place. Thanks, Bobby, for letting us visit. On the way through Joshua Tree, we stopped for a photo shoot. Then we blazed onward. Our next stop, Salvation Mountain, near Niland, CA.

Harrod did a special screening at Salvation Mountain for Leonard Knight, creator of this monumental art environment. Leonard is getting pretty old so it was a special treat to see him watching Harrod's movie. Unfortunately, I think he fell asleep during the part of the movie that he, and Salvation Mountain, are in. We spent the night in East Jesus with art car artist and iconoclastic visionary, Charlie Russell.

Early the next morning Harrod, with his two cars, and Nita and I, in the Cadwac, headed east across the desert to Yuma, for a brief photo shoot, lunch, and meeting with the mayor. Then on to Tucson. A full day of driving. We stopped at some really out-of-the-way gas stations and always drew a crowd. In Tucson several other cars joined us for Tucson's Second Saturdays art walk downtown. Harrod showed Automorphosis and the cars were displayed near the theater.

The largest event was next. Bisbee is known for having a lot of art cars for its size. There were eleven cars at Bisbee plus live bands and lots of fun. The Sierra Vista Herald covered the event and wrote a nice article with pictures. The last stop was at Art Car World. This will be a museum for art cars. There is a lot of work to do here, but Harrod has a great vision and I wish him success. He already has a small collection of art cars including one of my all-time favorites, "Carthedral," by Rebecca Caldwell.

We got back home last night. Now the Cadwac is leaking just about everything it can leak - oil, transmission fluid, coolant. I have a little bit of work to do to get it back into shape for another trip. It gets to rest awhile now, though. Winter is coming and that is not a good time to drive a car with no roof or heater.

We had a great time on the caravan. Click here for my pictures.

Here are some other people's blog posts and media coverage of the trip:
Cynthia's Hi-Desert Blog - about our visit to True World Gallery in Joshua Tree
Paintress Gretchen - photos of the Bisbee show

The Wac is Back

In August of 2006 the engine of my art car, the Cadwac, threw a rod on the way to Burning Man. We towed it back home after the event and then it sat in the yard at my shop, dead, for about a year. In Fall of 2007 I finally got a new engine put in it. The Baker brothers in Tucson did the rebuild at Bakers Auto Machne, LLC.. These guys really know what they are doing and did a great job. Instead of rebuilding the 472 c.i. engine, I traded it for a 500, which they bored out. So now I have an even bigger engine. It was rebuilt in a way to give me maximum longevity instead of building it for racing. This is what I wanted, for it to last a long, long time. Special thanks goes to Gary Taylor for hooking me up with the Baker brothers and for helping take the old engine out of the car.

Anyway, after the rebuild, and after we put the engine back in, we rarely drove it. I probably put only 500 miles on it in the first year since the rebuild. Since it was just sitting there, I decided to try to sell it. Of course, Prescott is not considered a major auto sales market, so I took it to my brother, Randy, in Southern California. He makes a living out of buying, selling, and brokering the sales of cars, mostly collectible Volkswagens. He owns Oldbug.com and has quite a reputation for reliability and honesty as well as tons of connections into the automotive world. He has been trying to sell the Cadwac for me for the past 10 months but no luck yet. An art car is a hard sell, I think.

Suddenly, the Cadwac is getting attention! It got photographed by journalists from Hot Rod Magazine at some event or another and ended up in the November 2010 issue of the magazine in a long article about Rat Rods. The photo shows just the front of the Cadwac with it's Burning Man-like hood ornament made from a wine bottle opener. Cool, huh?

Early in October, I am going to go to California and get my car and take it on an art car road-trip called The Southwest Art Car Caravan (caravan schedule at bottom of the linked page) and Film Tour. Harrod Blank's new movie, Automorphosis, will be screened at various locations between Los Angeles, CA and Douglas, AZ.from Sept. 30 to October 11th of this year. My wife and I will be joining the caravan from October 5 to October 9th. Our journey will begin Tuesday evening on Oct 5th at the Petersen Automotive Museum in L.A. From there we will caravan out to Joshua Tree, then to Salvation Mountain and East Jesus, on to Yuma for a short event, and then to Tucson for another event. At that point the Cadwac leaves the caravan and we head home to Prescott. The caravan continues without us to Bisbee and then to Douglas where Harrod has been creating Art Car World, a museum for art cars.

I am sure there will be various media covering the caravan as it makes its journey through the Southwest. And maybe the Cadwac will get its picture in more magazines, or newspapers, or, gasp, even television? I suppose I still should sell it. I have other ideas for art projects and the Wac has had a great life. I need the money and the space, too. You can own the Cadwac (after the Caravan) for a mere $3000. Remember, it has a nearly new rebuild (excellent quality rebuild, too!) on an awesome huge engine. The engine itself is worth more than 3000 dollars. Contact me if you want to buy a slightly famous and definitely wacky car!

See you on the road maybe!

Not at Burning Man!

We are back from our non-Burning-Man adventure. We got within two hours of the playa with no intention of going there. We imagined our friends out there in the dust, dancing and laughing and having fun. But we were on a different mission - communion with nature and exploration of the mountains.

 

We left Prescott on Sunday a week ago and drove to Independence, CA in the Owens Valley. We camped by a creek in the desert but there was an unusually cool period of weather at that time so it was very pleasant. Then we blasted up to Nevada City so I could show Nita the area. We couch-surfed with some locals that have lived there for 30 years so we could get the inside scoop on the region. It still looks extremely promising as a relocation destination. Lots of trees, cool people, rivers with water in them (how unusual), and reasonable distance to major metro (Sacramento) and to the high Sierras and the desert on the other side. 3 to 4 hours to the bay area as an added bonus in case we want to enjoy cultural adventures in one of the more cutting-edge cities in America.  

 

We spent a couple of days in Nevada City looking around, driving rural roads, putting our feet in rivers and picking blackberries that grow wild along the roads everywhere. Then we headed north on Hwy 49 to the California gold rush highway town of Downieville, a super cute little mountain town on the North Yuba River in the middle of gold rush country. It seems that this town is a conclave of members of the Ancient Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus. There is a tiny park with a big commemorative plaque to "Clampers" (what members of this group call themselves). After we visited Clamperville, I mean Downieville, we camped a night near Sierraville next to a creek surrounded by huge trees and then drove through Truckeeville and then through Renoville on our way back south down Hwy 395 -ville.

 

For the last three or four days we have been camping in the high Sierra, accessing it from the east side. We camped for two nights in the Virginia Lakes basin, right next to Trumbull Lake. We saw deer, beaver, trees, birds, rocks and sky and had to protect our food from bears. People were catching so many trout that they were giving extra fish to us. When we turned off 395 to drive up to the lakes we had no idea of the elevation. It turns out that the spot we turned off the main highway was over 8000 feet and the lake we camped at was at 9500 feet. We were thinking were were just out of shape until we found out how high we were. We spent most of a day hiking up to higher lakes and enjoying the awesome beauty. I was attacked by chipmunks, managed to fend them off, Nita took a dip in a nearly freezing lake, and then we had lunch.

 

Our last night (Saturday) was spent camped next to Big Pine Creek near the base of some 14,000-foot mountains. We were only at 7900 feet, though. Still pretty high. We did a tiny tribute burn that night. I made a little man out of sticks and set it in the fire pit. We faked the sound of thumping techno, faked a fire conclave show, burned the little man, and then danced around the fire pit one time. We laughed the whole time. Just the two of us.

 

Yesterday we drove home, crossed the Colorado River in mid-afternoon with the mercury at 111, and pulled into our driveway just after sunset.

 

It was just the vacation I needed. I got to visit an old and deeply loved friend, the Sierra Nevada mountains, and we endured exactly zero dust storms, unlike our friends in the Black Rock Desert. I heard that there were some crazy dust storms on the playa this last week. Probably no worse than any other year, though. I expect to start hearing reports from the Burn soon, as people straggle back to the default world.

Gypsy Wagon Progress - Color Scheme

I started running the electrical wiring inside the gypsy wagon today. The lighting will be 12 volt and there will be several 110 AC outlets when we can hook up to house power. I also started taking apart the stove I picked up. The stove, as it is, is a bit too tall. I figure I can cut the broiler part of it off and make the whole thing about 8 inches shorter. That ought to work.

I then took a little time to mess around on the computer to come up with an exterior color scheme we like. It's great to be able to manipulate color on the computer for this. What I started with in my minds eye was quite different than what we ended up with. Nita and I both consulted on the colors as I changed the color of each of the different elements until we found what we liked. With this info I will go to the paint store and try to find paint chips that match what we chose and have it mixed up for us.

Gypsy Wagon Progress - July 2010

I haven't had much chance to work on the gypsy wagon over the past several months. In the past few months though, I have made some progress. I got the wood siding on the front (tongue side). I put wood jambs into the door and window openings. I made access doors for the under-the-bed storage space and for the composting toilet. I found all these great little scroll-like pieces of steel and welded them onto the access doors to make them fancy. Click the picture to see the fancy on the doors.

I also just got a stove with an oven from my friend Mel down near Maricopa. Thanks, Mel! I may have to cut the bottom 9 inches off the stove (the broiler) so I can fit it where I want it. I don't think we need a broiler.

Doors and windows are next. They will have painted wood frames. I also need to put some sheet metal up on top to shed water and serve as a mounting base for the solar panels. I would love to get the whole thing sealed against the weather in the next couple of months.

East Jesus Hot This Summer

I delivered my largest wind sculpture, Cosmos, to East Jesus last weekend. The piece will get so much more attention there than it will ever get sitting in the yard at my Prescott, AZ shop. I wouldn't ordinarily expect  much attention until fall but this year may be different. Summertime in East Jesus is usually pretty dead. I'm sure that regular highs of 100 degrees or more have something to do with this. But not this year! Things are happening. Strange and inexplicable things.

Not only is Cosmos now happily spinning away in the desert, another sculpture, by artist Joe Holliday, has been delivered to the East Jesus Sculpture Garden. His sculpture is a 14-foot high woolly mammoth made of tire treads. You know, the ripped and shredded bits of truck tires that litter the shoulders of highways. The Mammoth is not assembled yet but will be together in time for East Jesus' first big summer event - the MAMMOTH ERECTION.- on Saturday, June 19th. The preceding link is to a Facebook page, There will be bands playing at the range and, I suppose, other fun activities. If you are willing to brave the heat of the desert, this will be a fun event. I can't make it, though. I will be performing with my fire troupe, Pyroklectic, in Prescott at the Tsunami-on-the Square performing arts festival that weekend. But that's not the only event in E.J. this summer.

Captain USA (pronounced "oo-sah") will be performing his annual 4th of July stunt for freedom in Slab City with preparations centered in the East Jesus compound. Read Charlie's blog post about this crazy guy. Captain USA will be filmed standing on top of a moving SUV covered with flaming fireworks and gasoline. Sure to be spectacular! The name of this event - The Flaming Burro of FREEDOM!! - another Facebook page. I probably won't make this one, either, but I wish I could. Sounds hilarious!

I will stay busy here, making things from steel and playing with fire. But YOU don't have to stay home. YOU can go out to the desert and participate in the craziness of East Jesus.

Teaching Art in Texas

My wife, Nita, and I taught workshops at the Eye of the Dog Art Center in San Marcos Texas last weekend. Nita taught a mosaic workshop and Royce taught a found-object art welding workshop. Each of us had ten students. It went really well. Everyone made cool stuff.

In addition to working, we got to visit with good friends, go tubing on the San Marcos River, have dinner at a Texas barbecue place, and make a bit of art ourselves. I posted some photos of the trip here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/zebulonspleen/Texas2010