Mike Mullen's Psychedelic 1961 Citroën Mystery Art Car

Mike Mullen's Psychedelic 1961 Citroen Mystery Art Car

Mike Mullen's Psychedelic 1961 Citroen Mystery Art Car

Mike Mullen's Psychedelic 1961 Citroen Mystery Art Car

Mike Mullen's Psychedelic 1961 Citroen Mystery Art Car

Mullen, 55, is a court officer in Detroit, Mich., who evicts people whose homes are in foreclosure, became an over night art car owner when he came upon this Psychedelic 1961 Citroën Mystery painted art car parked in a garage. On a typical day inspecting homes he opened up the garage of a house and found a 1961 Citroën parked beside five other European sports cars: an Austin-Healey, a Jensen-Healey, two Saab Sonetts, a Triumph TR8 and the eye-popping Citroën.

It turns out that the artists, possibly university students or teachers, transformed 61 Citreon from ordinary to OMG in Minneapolis about 40 years ago. Mullen, who now owns the art car, is set on finding out who created this amazing art car and thank them personally. By posting his story on art car central we hope to reach out and find those responsible for this amazing work of art.

If you are responsible please step forward and be congratulated:)

For the complete story

Mangled Madness Rally Car - The Duck By Jaryn part 2

In the last installment of a StreetSafari ArtCar we showed you the Citroen 1CV. We even left a cliff hanger! How's that for blogging?

The long and short of it is that Mr Ducks, owner of the Duck, knows these cars like the back of his hand. Which he should since he hand builds these things from scratch.

So whenever he goes missing on an event we don't unduly worry. He's probably in some town somewhere repairing the Duck. Doesn't matter what it is, he can repair it 9/10. No problems at all.

Even when teams tell us in the evening "it looked terminal", short of the car being on fire, we tell them that he'll make it, and most times he turns up late into the evening looking worse for wear, looking a bit grimier, but with a great story to tell (we think - as we don't know Czech).

On this particular event, he had genuinely gone missing though. But again, we weren't too concerned as he'll pop out somewhere. Which is exactly what he did. At the end in Prague, in a proper Citroen 2CV. Which was odd. He was sporting a rather large plaster on his head as well. This can only end well.

He then proceeded to show us the following pictures. He even brought a translator for the evening.

The outcome was that when a crate fell out of the back of an Italian lorry, all the cars dived left and right, including the Duck.

But with a suspension travel in excess of 12 inches, the car simply flipped over, rolled 4 times, and spilled it's contents across an Italian Autostrada. As he was off the main route, no one on the rally had actually seen what had happened.

The Italians put him in hospital overnight before flying him back to Prague the following day. The day after he drove into Prague (not far from his home) to see us, and tell us about his great adventure.

Please be careful with your Art Cars!
By Justin Clements Street Safari 
Original posted on Art Car Central

Patricia Van Lubeck Dazzling Array of Art Cars

Citroen Visa Art Car By Patricia Van Lubeck

I found this really amazing looking Citroen Visa Art Car all the way from New Zealand by artist Patricia Van Lubeck . This Painted Citroen art car is based on the use of opposite colors that make it really hard to focus and in that note she succeed in giving me headache:)

About Patricia
In such a short time, Patricia Van Lubeck has quickly become a leading neo-surreal artists. Born in Amsterdam in 1965, Patricia’s life has quite recently changed dramatically. She used to be book-keeper until 2000 when she started the 21st century by becoming a full time professional artist. She moved to the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand in 2005. Since then her work has taken a new direction. Although her style is often regarded as surreal, her work does not strictly fall in that category. Her paintings are apparently simple in composition but executed amazingly detailed and visually very dynamic. Her paintings have realistic elements, but above all an alienating atmosphere. Her works in recent years show landscapes and weird plant species which she calls her psychedelic gardens. `` I consider my work an invitation to explore the ways we experience our environment. My inspiration comes from the ordinary things around me, the artist in me just sees things in an unusual perspective. Picture a baker looking at a corn field. He sees bread, cookies and pies. I see shapes, patterns and colors. I like to zoom in on an everyday object such as the pins of a hair brush and imagine a tiny landscape with rows of hairy trees.’’ Remarkably, Patricia is a self-taught and self-starting artist. She sets a high benchmark for all her works and seeks to achieve a high level of craftsmanship. It takes her up to eight hours just to prepare the surface on some canvases. Then she oils up to 10 layers to achieve rich colors and a smooth finish. ``I am always trying to achieve high contrast within an unlimited color range. I love working with geometric patterns. Before I started painting on canvas, my cars had always been willing victims to this passion. Consequently patterns, natural or artificial, form the foundation of a lot of my images.’’ Due to her time-consuming technique Patricia is only able to create about 10 paintings a year. She loves painting at night in her rural studio setting with no distractions – just the call of the ruru (a New Zealand native owl) to keep her company. Patricia thrives on the repetitiveness of her patterns. She feels the calming aura in concentrating with a small brush in her ‘psychedelic botanic garden’. Since 2002, Patricia has exhibited in The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Portugal, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

2010 grantee of the Pollock-Krasner foundation in New York
finalist 2010 NZ Adam portraiture awards, 2007 NZ Painting and Printmaking Award and 2006 James Wallace Art Awards
2nd place Tivoli Audio PAL Case design contest

Citroen Visa Art Car By Patricia Van Lubeck

Citroen Visa Art Car By Patricia Van Lubeck

My boxy little Panda was just the right car for an intricate tartan pattern. It took some careful planning and a couple of days of concentrated painting but in the end all my efforts payed off..... the car looked like a shopping bag on wheels! We crossed many borders all over Europe with the Tartan Panda without being stopped by customs once. This is the ideal design for smuggling purposes!

Fiat Panda Tartan Art Car By Patricia Van Lubeck

Fiat Panda Tartan Art Car By Patricia Van Lubeck

Dazzle Painted Cars
'Dazzle painting' was a camouflage technique used by allied forces during World war I. Ships were painted in large geometrical patterns and contrasting colors in an attempt to confuse the German navy. Most important function of this camouflage was to disguise the front of the ship and its sailing direction to enemy submarines. Although visually very effective, sadly this kind of painting did not prove to be a major advantage in battle. There's a good article about art & camouflage (featuring this car) on the Tate Museum site. An excellent source of info is the book 'Dazzle painting' by Albert Roskam (ISBN 90 71893 02 2). It's written in Dutch but it has lots of images. I gave my cars this urban camouflage to maximize my chances of survival in the inner city traffic.

Opel Kadett Dazzle Art Car By Patricia Van Lubeck

Opel Kadett Dazzle Art Car By Patricia Van Lubeck

Opel Kadett Dazzle Art Car By Patricia Van Lubeck

Fiat Ritmo Dazzle Art Car By Patricia Van Lubeck

Fiat Ritmo Dazzle Art Car By Patricia Van Lubeck

copy and photos via
Posted on Art Car Central

Crazy Chopped Czech Citroen Rally Car - The Duck By Jaryn

One of StreetSafari's events is called CzechWrecks. We take our colorful cars to France, rag them down to Switzerland and over the Swiss Alps, into Austria, and then up into Prague in the Czech Republic. (Not Czechoslovakia, as after they got independence the Czechs and Slovaks decided that they really didn't like each other, and went their separate ways, hence Czech Republic and Slovakia today.)

This vehicle is from our first ever CzechWrecks, entered by a slightly mad Czech guy called Jaryn.

Now, we've never actually had a full and proper conversation with Jaryn as he doesn't speak a word of English, and we don't speak whatever he speaks. So we talk via translators when/if they are around. Jaryn can be best described as an artist, and a very talented one at that. We think he makes stained glass windows for churches, and he does more or less come from Bohemia which is quite fitting.

One day, (we're not sure when) Jaryn took delivery of a Citroen 2CV that had had a head on into a tree. It was a in a bad way; he did what any perfectly normal person would do, and cut it down the middle, and welded it all back together to create a Citroen 1CV. You were thinking that right?

So what we have here is possibly a one off creation, although we think he may have made a few before this 1CV, although he definitely made a few afterwards as we'll show you next week.

If you know the 2CV you will know that it has very wallowy suspension in the first place. Imagine what it's like when it's half the width! On a hairpin the suspension has over a foot of travel! Even a Ford F150 Raptor doesn't have a foot of suspension travel. As Jaryn takes a hairpin corner, he can put his hand out of the window, and literally drag his hand on the tarmac road surface! See what angle your car has to be to do the same thing!

This car also has a party trick - stick the steering on full lock, put it in gear, and jump out of the car. The result is an impressive car that drives itself in circles. Trouble is that the circle moves and its not before long that you will see a very slightly mad Czechman running after his car before it piles into something solid.

Enjoy the pictures!
By Justin Clements Street Safari 

Graffiti Art Car

Graffiti Car in Prague, Czech Republic - photo by schwiiz.org


Photo and Art by Jeral Tidwell.

The Grass Car

For the longest time I have been fascinated by grass covered cars. Its a whole other world when people cover vehicles in astroturf or even better real grass. The later takes a bit more skill as you will see in the video of a guy who started doing that in the late eighties. I did a search on Google and Flikr and found a few more vehicles covered in this stuff, the effect is simply amazing. Talk about an eco friendly green car.

Brooklyn, New York artist Gene Pool is featured in this short video from the movie Wild Wheels by Harrod Blank

Gene Also did a Grass Bus

And here are some other Grass Cars I found on Flikr

Photo by temp13rec.

Photo by Cyrius

Photo by basheem

Photo by Daniel Mauermann

Photo by anab Jain

Photo by northreflections

Photo by europeanartphoto

Photo by Mulad

Photo bymeherenow

And a few others