Art Cars

This is an amazing high-heeled shoe car that I photographed at the Seattle Art Car Blowout. This fantastic art car show is part of the overall festivities known as the Fremont Fair, aka the Fremont Solstice Parade, an annual event that happens in one of the sections of the city of Seattle. See the 2004 gallery or the 2006 gallery.

Art cars come from all over for this show with the majority being from the state and along the West Coast.

The Solstice Parade and Art Car Blowout take place the third weekend of June in Seattle and you can find a link for this event (Fremont Fair) in the "art car show" list below.

So, there we were... driving along... minding our own business.... Seriously, my friend Calyxa and I were in the middle of a road trip in Nevada in May 2006, when the highway we were driving down suddenly posted decreasing speed limits. Ah, the sign that a town was ahead. Sometimes you'd come across a big city, sometimes it was a ghost town.

The road was going downhill and we were turning a bit to the right as the road came around a building corner. And there they were. I pointed and burst out "Art Cars!" and already my friend was pulling the car over. Something to be said for those in-town 25 mph speed limits after all.

We had come across the Goldfield Art Car Park and the creations of Rocket Bob (Robert Van Kauren). We'd actually heard of him, in a conversation with another art car guy only just three weeks ago on another road trip.

It was clear from the stickers that these cars make regular appearances at Burning Man. One also bore a sign reading "Reno Cacophony Society." There was so much to see, it was hard to see it all. Thank goodness both of had digital cameras quickly at the ready. We only stopped for about fifteen minutes, but it was a dense and rich quarter of an hour. Truly delighted, we left donations in the little box that was provided, jumped back into our car and headed off to the next adventure.

Interestingly, when we compared pictures later, we found certain visual elements we'd taken nearly identical pictures of, and other little bits that only one of us had noticed and captured.

Several years ago in San Francisco, I saw a fantastic art car on the street and snapped a picture of it. I especially like that there was a Blue Meanie flying glove on one of the side view mirrors. When I first put up this lens, I used that picture for the introduction.

And then one day, I got an email. A woman had come across my lens and recognized the intro picture as a detail of her very own art car! Her name is Avril, and she is the creator and driver of Grooovalicious Purple Princess of Peace. I got to meet Avril and Grooovalicious at the Seattle Art Car Blowout a few weeks after that first email, and I must say Grooovalicious was even more luscious than I remembered!

Grooovlicious was created in March of 2003 for a peace parade that was protesting the impending US invasion of Iraq. Many more details and art have been added over the last few years. The driver's side of the car has lots of flowers and land-based art on it, and the passenger side has ocean emblems and icons.

Shown here is a detail from the roof, which is home to many wonderful creatures! You can see more of Grooovalicious here or see Avril's Grooovalicious slideshow.

April 2007: I just got email from Avril, letting me know that the Purple Princess of Peace blew a headgasket and has passed on to that Great Art Car Show of the Hereafter. RIP Grooovalicious! However, she has started on a new car....

This is Nick's 4th art car, "Does Not Compute." I met Nick recently at an Earth Day gathering near Fresno, CA. His car got that name as he presently lives in Silicon Valley and because the majority of the people who talk to him about his car don't comprehend that all the computer and glowing blue neon is non-functional art stuff that Nick installed inside his car. They either think it really "works" somehow, or they ask if they'll find the same type of stuff if they cut holes in the bodies of their cars. Nick thinks it's both funny and sort of sad how little the average person really understands about their cars.

His favorite detail about "Does Not Compute" is that it's got a "flux capacitor" like the car from the "Back To The Future" movies inside it.

He used to own a Rat Mobile, but it didn't like the diesel gas in CA, so he had to sell it to someone who lived in OR, where he used to live, and apparently where the Rat Mobile strangely liked the gas.

If you'd like to see bigger pictures and more details of Does Not Compute, just click here.

Update: as of the summer of 2006, Does Not Compute has been converted to be more environmental. I can't remember if it now runs on bio-diesel or if it's entirely electric, but I'm trying to find out.