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

My Bus Adventure

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that, about 20 years ago, I had a school bus that was converted into a motor home, I then went on to talk about hippie buses and how cool they were. Well, my bus was a 1962 Dodge. It was 32 feet long and had a 350 Chevy engine and automatic transmission. It was slow and got between 8 and 9 miles per gallon.  I bought it in 1990 for $800.

I wanted to move away from the L.A. area and needed a good camping vehicle. What I was really looking for was a Volkswagen bus. I saw an ad in the paper for an old school so I thought I'd go ahead and take a look, even though that was not what I was looking for. I have always loved the old hippie buses so I called the advertiser of the school bus and arranged to see it. I was a bit panicky as I caught myself making an offer on it. "What am I doing?" I thought to myself. "This is crazy." Amazingly they accepted my offer and then a big smile creased my face and the next thought was, "I just bought an $800 ticket to heaven!"

It was already partially converted inside. I went to work on it to finish the conversion by adding cabinets, cleaning up the kitchen, adding some furniture, etc. I painted the bus and my friend, Billy, made a wooden grille for it. I had a couple of yard sales to sell everything I owned that wouldn't fit in the bus, moved into it, and drove off into the night leaving Southern California behind for good. I didn't know where I was going or where I would end up. I was on the road! I ended up in Prescott, Arizona, where I still am today. In 1992 I traded the bus for a truck and a small travel trailer.

It was fun having the bus but I think, even more fun, will be the gypsy wagon I am building. Now that I am back from my annual allergy escape trip, I am back to work on it. I got the tongue-and-groove siding put on the front of the gypsy wagon this past weekend. The next step is to create the jambs for the door and windows.