Save Phonehenge West from Destruction

 For the last 30 years Kim Fahey has been building an impressive live-in art installation in the mountain/desert of Southern California. Now it is threatened with destruction due to building code violations. Not only that, it's creator faces possible prison time for building art! That's crazy. Sentencing is July 8, 2011, so there is very little time to mount a massive public outcry to stop this travesty.
This is a major artwork and needs to be saved, in my opinion. It is also an example of  government's out-of control-intrusion into people's lives. Read this LA Times article about the latest trial and then go to the Save Phonehenge West Facebook page to stay informed and/or make a donation to fund the efforts to save it.. This isn't just about art. It's about government's increasing erosion of private property rights and creative expression.
I hope to visit Phonehenge West in a couple of weeks to show support and take some photos and video of it. If we can't save it from the wrecking ball, at least we can document it's creative grandeur before the denizens of mediocrity destroy it..
 It's not impossible to save artwork from the government. In Chandigarh, India, a major sculpture garden by Nek Chand was threatened by the Indian government. Because of public outcry, the government backed down and actually ending up making it a park and funding it's maintenance. In California, the location of Phonehenge West,  the Watts Towers were threatened by the government and then, because of public involvement, it was saved and is now a government funded park.
The government exists to serve the people. Not the other way around. Please share this with everyone you know.

Rest In Peace Charlie Russell

Charlie Russell, aka Chasterus, died sometime in the night between Tuesday, May 10 and Wednesday, May 11. It was natural causes of some kind but we don't know yet exactly what happened. He was a well-known art car artist and the founder and mayor of East Jesus. For anyone who doesn’t know, East Jesus is a habitable, extensible, experimental art environment-in-progress that has been Charlie’s home since December of 2006. His website is currently still online but I don't know for how much longer since no one but he had the password.

Charlie wasn’t feeling well the weekend before his death. He had stomach and lower back pain. A friend took him to the hospital Monday morning. I don’t know what all they did but they ended up prescribing antibiotics and an antispasmodic and sent him home. A trusted friend stayed with him through Tuesday and, in the evening, Charlie said he was feeling a little better. The friend went home. At 7 AM the next morning (Wednesday) he cam back to check on Charlie and found him sitting where he left him - apparently a peaceful death.

Most of the time, when someone dies in Slab City, their camps are disassembled within weeks by the locals who take what they can use and sell the rest for scrap. We did not want this to happen to East Jesus. Almost immediately word was spread about what happened. Jon Alloway, the producer and director of an upcoming movie, “Into the Zone”, was instrumental in contacting those close to Charlie. Close friends, Greg Hill, Flip Cassidy and Joe Holliday arrived the very same night to protect East Jesus from looters. More friends arrived over the next few days, including myself, until over a dozen supporters were present to decide how to preserve East Jesus. It was a good weekend. Not a happy weekend, but good. If only Charlie could have seen the love shown for him and his creation.

At this time East Jesus is being maintained and even expanded. Friends have been erecting a perimeter fence around the compound and another, higher, fence around the containers and living space. The site is occupied 24/7 so that nothing gets damaged or stolen. Keeping it going through this summer will be the biggest challenge since it is brutally hot, especially in August and September. 

Charlie will be missed by many, many people. He was a renaissance man. His expertise covered so much ground. His singing was amazing. He had technical knowledge about so many things. He was way into ham radio and other electronics stuff. He had a refined sense of design when he created art. He had strong, well thought out, opinions about most things. He had a great sense of humor. To his friends, he was kind and generous and he had almost zero tolerance for mean or dishonest people. He followed his own path with little regard for convention or social norms. I loved and respected Charlie and will miss him greatly.

A memorial celebration is being held on June 5^th at NIMBY in Oakland, CA. I can't make it for this but I created a short video to be played at the event. There is a collaboratively created sculpture area in East Jesus that serves as a memorial to Charlie. We started it the weekend after he died. If you knew him, you are invited to add to it. 

To stay informed about East Jesus, or help it continue, you can view the East Jesus Facebook page.

Mega Art Jam Report

Craziness in the desert! We arrived Friday morning in East Jesus for the Mega Art Jam and East Jesus Build Party. There were over 20 people present and creativity was the order of the weekend. I worked a little on the Tower and Nita and I both started cutting fabric to make flags to string along the guy wires for the tower.
Our friend Blaze came down from Northern California and created a sculpture in the garden. He also did some needed maintenance work including leveling the library trailer, one of the latest additions to the East Jesus compound.

Rabbit worked on his camp, cleaning up and bringing in more building materials. Joe added another room onto Xanadon't - his growing art structure. Some of the Gypsy Camp folks were playing music, and it was a damn good time. The weather was perfect. See my photos You should also check out, if you can, this batch of photos by Flip - Really great shots. AND... I made an extremely short video. Short because I didn't shoot much footage. It's too bad I didn't capture some of the amazing musicians on video.

Mega Art Jam in East Jesus

 This Thanksgiving weekend there will be a MEGA ART JAM in East Jesus. All kinds of artistic possibilities and projects will be explored, added to, started, finished, and embellished. From Friday November 26 to Sunday November 28 there will be an art creation extravaganza in the tiny suburb of Slab City, East Jesus, population: one.

Come out and make art out of junk, camp in the desert, and have a good time. This is desert camping. Bring your own everything. Don't leave a mess. Don't piss off the mayor!
More info about the event on the East Jesus Build Party Facebook page If you want to come to the event, be sure to R.S.V.P. on the Facebook page.

There are other fun things to see in the vicinity, too. The big attraction is Salvation Mountain. This is an art/religious monument created by Leonard Knight. There are also some gigantic, wildly painted concrete tanks. There are lots of art cars, too. For those interested in a natural anomaly, there are mud volcanoes only a couple of miles away at the edge of the Salton Sea. The Sea, itself, is pretty strange, not to mention the active bombing range right next to East Jesus. What a krazeee place!

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.