Nancy Reagan Art Car Billboard

uploaded by ehoyer.

Here is an art car with a giant photo of Nancy Reagan on a van totally protected from towing, wheel booting and vandalism. Its in San Francisco so I guess it needs all that, but I am not sure the purpose of it all.

The 12 Days of Christmas Art Cars

The Internet would not be complete without the the 12 days of Art Cars song to commemorate this Christmas Eve. So here is my attempt at creative art car song writing.

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

A Truck with Christmas Lights.

2 Santa's Cruising

3 Volvo's Glowing

4 NASCARS Racing

5 Snowy Hills

6 Jeeps a Glowing

7 Bugs-a-Crawling

8 Trucks-a-Hauling

9 Bikers Bicking

10 Cycles-a-Rolling

11 Leaping Reindeer's

12 Mercedes Wreaths

Sorry that was painful, but Merry Christmas

The Making of Stellabelle Art Car - Video

Here is an art car from one of my facebook friend named Leah Stella called Stellabelle a 99 Toyota with Almost 200,000 miles on it. The outside depicts worms, lights and Dr. Suess style things and was painted using exterior house paint. Stella is a videographer, composer, graphic artist and Youtube director with a very interesting video of the making of her art car and if you like this there is plenty of it where that came from on her YouTube channel.

Cover Art - The GW Review

My painting, Gil Scott-Heron, is displayed on the cover and 3 others, Audrey, Dana, Bay Bridge, are inside the current issue of The GW Review, a literary publication of new writers published by the students and faculty of George Washington University in Washington D.C.
The GW Review Website

Outside Philipsburg

Oil on canvas, 20" x 30"

(Inspired by the photography
of Craig Robinson, taken outside
of Philipsburg, MT)

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 34

The National Gallery of Art reports that "For several months in the winter of 1816-1817, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld vied with his friends, brothers Ferdinand and Friedrich Olivier, in making precise drawings of dried leaves."

Julius created this tiny pen and ink drawing as part of their competition:



What a blissful way to remain warm: rubbing your impressions of nature up against each other.





There were plenty of dried leaves in 1816, which was known as "the year without a summer." Julius and his friends, isolated from the world and immersed in their game, had no way of knowing that on the other side of the planet, the most deadly explosion in recorded history had taken place: the volcanic eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia. This "super-colossal explosion" was heard over 2,000 kilometers away. It belched massive quantities of volcanic ash into the sky, blocking the sun and creating volcanic winter as far away as Europe where Julius sat peacefully drawing. Leaves died and crops failed, causing the worst famine of the 19th century.

Meanwhile, different types of explosions were taking place in the political realm. The great Napoleon Bonaparte who had shaken governments to their knees and cast Europe into turmoil had recently met his downfall in the Battle of Waterloo. In 1816, Napoleon's entire family was banished from France forever.



The epic events taking place outside while Julius and his friends focused on dry leaves were so huge and momentous, they make us stop to ponder the grand sweep of things.



Yet, if you are seeking a finite expression of the infinite you are more likely to find it in this gentle little drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld.

Near Pullman

Oil on canvas, 20" x 30"

(Inspired by the photography
of Craig Robinson, taken near
Pullman, WA)

Melting ears (on Cory Arcangel's two works)

The one I liked was this:


while the one that goes further is this:


Both are fragments of works by Cory Arcangel.
The difference between them is significant. The first one is a joke - it is a repetition, a trick played on the idea of reproduction or universality.
The other one too. But the other one moves towards something else. It provides us with the doubt as to what it should be like. I don't know Schoenberg's op. 11, 3. I might have heard it, but I'm not sure how it sounds. Yet it certainly doesn't sound like these cats. Or does it? What is it about Schoenberg that makes him sound like Schoenberg? And why do we need him to sound like Schoenberg? (Why do we call artists people who interpret in the most faithful way? And no, this is not a rhetorical question. What is it about repetition that still makes it move us aesthetically? And no, any form of the answer "the difference within the repetition" will not satisfy me as long as I keep putting the same piece on my mp3 player and enjoy it beause it is the same, and still appreciate its freshness, not its "difference".) The thing, here, is not just about the cats, it isn't the old elephant-making-oil-paintings trick. It is rather about other possibilities of listening, of paying attention, of defining what you hear. Can we hear the Schoenberg in the original cat videos? Can we hear Bach in the original music versions? The Bach composition, in that sense, says too much - it states a clear correspondence between the original YouTube videos and Bach's work. The second says less: it says "it is out there, but it's hard to say where exactly, and why exactly we would stop there". (And does it while being damn funny). And that's when our ears melt and reconsolidate, they become other ears, and other, and other. We are forced to listen to what might be there, and not what we think is there.
So why do I like the first video more? Maybe because I still enjoy what is there a lot.
Or because I'm not a fan of Schoeberg.

Lillian

Oil on canvas panel, 16" x 20"

Road To Palouse Falls

Oil on canvas, 18" x 24

(Inspired by the photography
of Craig Robinson, taken near
Palouse Falls, WA)

Dickens 44 Bascom Art Car Mystery

Dickens44 and Girlfriend with Bascom Art Car

This mosaic Ford Falcon art car was created by artist and former curator for the Unknown Museum Dickens 44 Bascom on facebook a mystery worth investigating.

At first all I found was that Bascom 44 was born on the 44th day of 1944 at 44 minutes past 4:00 am. I am guessing that's were the "44" part of his name came from.

With the help of my friend Amanda who did some more digging I found out that he was part of a growing movement called the "gluers" spearheaded by a group called the Moligator Manufacturing Company, the Northern Frog Works. They met and exchanged gluable materials like costume jewelry, rubber mice, teeth, baby heads, tennis balls, bottle caps, plastic salt shakers and beyond. Dickens Bascom, a noted northern California gluer, looked forward to the day when he could join other gluers and purchase a large office building and decorate it in their fashion. "I'm determined to do it," he says. "I think it's something people need."

Larry Fuente who knew him said he was always raiding people’s basements for ‘art supplies’ and hanging stained glass windows from their trees, engaging neighbors in making art and “an expert at getting people, whole families, to do art together.”

Dickens 44 is still painting and gluing objects after all these years and has managed to produce a very large and wonderful body of art found on his site. The art car itself is pretty amazing and deserves its place here on art car central. Mystery somewhat solved.

The Vochol VW Art Car Covered in 2000 Beads

The Volkswagen Beetle with its long association with Mexico, has been used in a unique project initiated by the Museo de Arte Popular (MAP), and turned into a colorful art car represented with the art of the indigenous Huichol. “Vochol” (from the slang word for the car – Vocho – and the word “Huichol”) was created by two indigenous families over a period of seven months.

This VW art car is covered with over 2 million beads on the body, dashboard, and steering wheel and is intended to highlight the art of the region. The designs on the vw art car were created by master craftsman Francisco Bautista, that depict traditional imagery. Serpents resting on clouds on the front of the art car, sun and four eagles on the roof, and a shaman in a boat on the trunk.

The Vochol will be on display at the MAP in Mexico City and will go on tour in Europe and America, and finally, it will be put up for auction that will hopefully go for about half a million pesos. The proceeds will go to the Association of Friends of the Museo de Arte Popular (AAMAP).

RICHARD THOMPSON

Richard Thompson's drawings make me happy, not just because he is so darn funny but because his work is a daily reminder that a beautiful line and a lively intellect are still enough to succeed in this wicked world. No software, Dolby sound or corporate financing necessary; just pure observations about human nature scratched onto bristol with a dip pen nib.



Thompson is an illustrator / cartoonist / writer in the tradition of James Thurber. If Ronald Searle and Bill Watterson got married and had a baby which was raised by Crockett Johnson, that would be Thompson.

His illustrations have appeared in the New Yorker, The National Geographic, the Atlantic Monthly and other publications. I love this smart, witty series of drawings about superstition that appeared in the Washington Post:







Look at the marvelous way he handles the horizon line in this next image:



Thompson's syndicated comic strip, cul de sac, is regularly the most delightful space on the newspaper comic page. With the demise of Calvin & Hobbes, I feared that every possible comic strip idea had been exhausted, and that we were now doomed to an endless loop of formulaic gags of the type found in Garfield, Cathy and Family Circus. (The world's leading recycling industry is not Waste Management Inc. but newspaper comic syndicates.) But cul de sac views the world with a child-like freshness and offers a new, recognizably true insight every day. This is really hard work; it requires high standards and a hyper-active conscience. But Thompson understands the importance of making the end result appear effortless, and cul de sac floats lighter than air.

In the immortal words of Jessica Rabbit, "He makes me laugh."

Cafe Society Singer

Oil on canvas, 30" x 20"

HARVEY DUNN (1884 - 1952)

Harvey Dunn was a tall, muscular prairie farmer with a rare artistic gift. He started out plowing buffalo trails into farmland on the South Dakota frontier and ended up as one of the giants of the golden age of illustration.

A teacher at an a agricultural School noticed Dunn's talent and persuaded the 17 year old to travel to Chicago to train at the Art Institute. There he came to the attention of the legendary Howard Pyle, who brought Dunn to Wilmington Delaware where Pyle ran a school for gifted young illustrators. Among all of Pyle's talented students, Dunn was the young Prometheus who became inspired by Pyle's gift of teaching and passed it along to a whole new generation of artists, from Dean Cornwell and Mead Schaeffer to Saul Tepper and Harold von Schmidt. Dunn returned regularly to his South Dakota home for inspiration later in life.

Here are examples of Dunn's lovely work:











Until this week, Harvey Dunn was the last remaining giant among the "golden age" illustrators without a book memorializing his work. Howard Pyle, Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, J.C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and others have substantial art monographs-- some of them have several.



I am happy to report that this gap has now been filled.

Walt Reed, the world's leading authority on illustration, has completed a splendid new book, Harvey Dunn: Illustrator and Painter of the Pioneer West. The book brings together an excellent collection of Dunn's art (367 plates, 294 of them in color) often with new photographs from the original paintings. I thought I knew Dunn's work, but this book came as a revelation to me (which is, I guess, a primary reason for reading a book). The book also presents Dunn's teaching methods and demonstrates the prodigious results of that teaching, with an illustrated selection of Dunn's more successful students.

I have always enjoyed Reed's writings for the integrity of his scholarship, the clarity of his prose, and especially for his impeccable judgment.

Just as sculptor Gutzon Borglum chiseled the faces of great presidents from the granite cliffs of South Dakota's Mount Rushmore, Walt Reed has done more than anyone else to define the Mt. Rushmore of great illustrators of the 20th century. His work is as solid and reliable as granite. I highly recommend his new book to everyone interested in this field.

Horses

Oil on canvas, 18" x 24"

How to sell an Art Car by Bizarro

Comic by Bizarro

Anyone who has ever had an Art Car for sale will tell you that convincing someone to look past all the paint and glued objects can be tough. This Bizarro comic depicting a father attempting to get the buyer to look past all the barbies glued on his daughters 2001 Mercedes S430 sedan says it all.

Rogaine for Cars Commercial - Hairy Art Cars are all the rage

This weird commercial of a hairy car driven by a bald man was sent in by Martin just now. Not sure what the commercial is all about but it is pretty funny seeing a car completely covered in human hair blowing in the wind. It could be a hair club for men commercial who knows, anyone? Rogaine for cars maybe?

Tesla Art Car For Sale - Tesla Motors finally gets it

Tesla Art Car - (Credit: Tesla Motors)

Tesla Motors finally got in the art car game by commissioning their very own Tesla Roadster art car created by digital media pioneer Laurence Gartel, whose commercial work includes glossy magazine advertisements for Absolut vodka.

The car is for sale for only $109,000, but because it features a vinyl car wrap, the buyer will have to pony up a few more bucks for the art work which by the way has a shelf life of about 5 years. via cnet.

Tesla Art Car - (Credit: Tesla Motors)

Tesla Art Car - (Credit: Tesla Motors)