Sentrasaurus Art Car for Sale - Mythical Beast Going Cheap on Ebay

more photos here

Oh goody, the Sentrasaurus Art Car is now up for sale on eBay for those of you looking for a "Dinosauraus Mosaicus" built on a Nissan Sentra. Richard is trying to unload this mythical beast on the cheap so he can raise money for his next art car project. here is the more on the art car.

Vehicle Description: The Sentra now know as "Sentrasaurus" for it's abstract dinosaur resemblance began it's transformation into an art car in late 2008 for the Houston Art Car Parade which it has since appeared in 2009 and 2010. The exterior consists of a skin made of mosaic stained glass and mirror structures (spikes) creating a spine down the center. The entire vehicle is covered with mosaic glass which is glued on with silicone adhesive and was later grouted to fill in the cracks. The mirror spikes are soldered together and are screwed into the body of the vehicle. The added weight from the extra glass, silicone, grout, and mirrors is unknown although we would probably estimate around 150-200lbs.

Rocking Mercedes Art Car from Ikaria Greece

I found this Rocking Mercedes Art Car in a granite wall made on the Island of Ikaria in Greece on the facebook page about the island. Its a retaining wall made from granite and the Mercedes is built in the wall using various colored stone. This photo is especially fantastic to me, first because I spend my childhood summers there and second because the Mercedes Pens is my favorite art car ride. I can believe I found photo, I never imagined finding and art car in Ikaria but I am not surprised so see such artistry manifest in this way.

36ft Multicolored British Limo Monstrosity

via

The UK had their own version of the Cash for Clunkers called the "Scrappage Scheme". The government scheme is coming to a close but the car manufactures are picking up the plan so Nissan decided to mark the occasion by building a multicolored 36 ft scrap car limo monstrosity constructed by renowned sculptor Graham Wardale, who works for a specialist movie props company.

The vehicle took a team of four more than 500 hours to create, and is made up of more than 2000 parts – including a set of fluffy dice. Unfortunately it has no engine so it wont be gracing  the streets of London. Darn it! I wonder how many prom couples you could fit in it?

COMIC-CON 2010 (conclusion)

[This is the last installment of my field report on my expedition through darkest Comic-Con with gun and camera. Special thanks to those who have managed to remain awake.]

It seems that every year, Comic-Con gets larger and louder.

As Nell Minow observed, Comic-Con has evolved into "the Iowa caucuses of popular culture," the trial balloon for movies, television series, books, computer games and music in addition to comics. Film studios now erect statues of cyborgs, rocket ships and cartoon characters that tower over the exhibition hall. Rival fusillades of Dolby sound thunder back and forth across the convention center, each heralding the birth of the next great superhero legend.

It's not surprising that so much of Comic-Con centers around themes of extraordinary power. Power has been the focus of myth and legend since ancient times (Simone Weil famously noted that, "The true hero, the true subject matter, the center of the Iliad is force.")

I was among those who went to Comic-Con to enjoy its power, but not in the sense of high decibel levels or great speed. I am not one of those who is easily awed by armies of trolls or muscle bound super heroes.

If you want to see my concept of strength, take a look at these tiny pencil drawings by Noel Sickles which I discovered in the back of the Comic-Con booth of our old friends at Illustration House.



These are modest spot illustrations from a long-forgotten 1960s article about Russian spies. To me, they are smart, powerful and utterly persuasive.



I saw a lot of meticulous art at Comic-Con depicting shoe laces, fingernails and strands of hair in sharp detail. But ultimately I agree with Balzac: “Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.” For me, these drawings strike true.



Note how the only part of this hotel bar scene in sharp focus is the hand holding the drink.


The remainder of the drawing, including the drinker's other hand, merges into abstraction. Sickles had clear priorities in his drawings and made no secret of them.

And while we're on the subject of hands, note in this next detail how Sickles conveys these hands tearing up documents:



Sickles has already proven that he knows how to draw hands accurately, but here he has employed stark orthogonal lines to show the tension of opposable thumbs at work.

Or in this next detail, note how even at this miniature size, Sickles' sparse line conveys an understanding of the folds in that jacket sleeve.



Amidst all of the booming sound effects and flashing lights of Comic-Con, there is also a lot of power in the more meaningful sense of "striking true." That's why I go back.

Hair Hummer Art Car by Little Willie - Detroit Hair Wars 2010

Photo by Peter Hapack for Time

I run into this picture the other day from an article in Time about the Detroit's annual Hair Wars 2010 where stylists go at it with scissors and hair products creating the most amazing hairs styles in the US. I was interested in this particular piece because it was a car, The "Hair" Hummer Art Car Styled by Little Willie and modeled by Sharv Bailey that took an entire day to create. A while back I posted about some hairy art cars with hair on top of them but never a car made from hair. I even had one from fashion week with a tire rim as a hat.

VW Lightmobile by Eric Staller

LightMobile from sietske tjallingii on Vimeo.

The VW Lightmobile was the first in the urban UFOs series created by Eric Staller in 1985 that was covered with 1659 lamps and computerized to produce 20 different patterns of light flowing over the car. I should have had this amazing art car on Art Car Central from day one, but better late than never.

Within the Lines

What if there was nothing to discover? No story, no thousand words, no answer to a non-riddle? What if it was really, really, just a game of forms and colors?
Would it be a sin?
Does this lady need a past?
Is it really so bad for something to be "just" a pretty picture?
We know of the danger of beauty, we know the seductive spectacle means flirting with submission, yet is it really so immoral?

We possibly wouldn't say it about Rafał Wilk's works. They are often witty, playful, insightful. They play with the idea of light, of bi-dimensionality, of what a work is.
But, to continue on my doubt - does having a story constitute a challenge? Or is it just because we like the indolence of layered thinking, the safety net of there being "something else", so as to let our imagination ride a little further...? But haven't we turned it into a rule for (a lot of) contemporary art? This story-telling capacity? (Can someone say a good story about this? If so, the author of the story and the author of the work get a bonus.)
What if it's a pretty picture? What if it's pretty, pretty, pretty, a thousand times pretty? What if it's so damned pretty you don't want it to be a story, to go beyond it being pretty?
Of course, I have the right to omit the depth. And then also, every good story is many stories deep. But some of the best works I know present a fascinating resistance to storytelling. They are like a stone, at once attractive and opaque. They make me want to read within the lines.

And here, somewhat related, is a summer holiday bonus: