The Chicks Rock "Build an Art Car" workshop has been scheduled for Sat. October 23 from 10 am to 1 pm. It's going to be so much fun!
Someone has donated a truck which we're going to turn into an art car. I want the car to have lots of different things going on, not one single decorative theme like Undersea Mah Jongg. Because I want it to be fun for the participants. Countless hours of tedious, repetitive work might be the reality of creating an art car in most cases, but it wouldn't make for an enjoyable workshop! (For the same reason I'm trying to avoid decorative techniques that take a lot of time to cover a small space, like the beading on my car.) I have some ideas percolating on the "Chicks Rock" theme and I'm going to hit up local thrift stores for donations of cheap materials.
Chicks Rock will have workshops going on all day, not just ours. But at the end of the day we're going to reconvene with as many local art cars as we can get, light them up, and do a glow cruise around Durham. The truck only goes 10 mph so we won't go too far afield -- probably just Ninth Street, maybe around the circle on East Campus, and a few neighborhoods around that area. It would be nice to promote the cruise in advance so people on the route know to watch for us. But, we won't have a parade permit or anything, so I'm a little concerned about drawing too much attention to it. (The Durham police have always been really nice to me, so maybe I'm worrying too much.) I might ask people I know who live in West Durham to have "porch parties" that night so we'll have some good spectators.
The date is perfect for me -- we're going out of town from the 9th to the 12th, so this way I have about 10 days in town to get ready. Unfortunately, Lisa won't be able to bring 9 Westy to the caravan since she has her own event the weekend of the 23rd. Which is a damned shame. Well I know of a couple other local art cars that may be able to come. And even if it ends up just being Undersea Mah Jongg and the Chicks Rock truck, it will still be fun.
I posted on the artcarz list and got some great advice for the workshops. Things I might not have thought of, like having a cleaning station (a bucket of water and bottle of hand cleaner) at every corner of the work area. Also advice on how to get donations of supplies, which I totally suck at. And suggestions on time-saving prep work I can do in advance. Yay for the artcarz people! They rule.
The only thing that concerns me is the 3 hour time frame. That seems like hardly any time at all to create an art car. However, one guy on the artcarz list told me that he and 10 high school students did an art car in 2.5 hours, so I guess it's possible. I just hope we get at least 10 people!
So now that Artscape is over and my photography class is over, it's time to get to work on planning the workshop. Which means I need to figure out what exactly we're going to be doing and convince someone to give me the materials. Eek!
7 Comments
10 am on a saturday? who picked that start time??
I've seen tv specials on art cars, and the one that always stands out in my mind was the car covered in pennies. That had to take forever, I'm thinking. Plus I can imagine that the pennies added some weight.
I was just nosing around at foundphotos.com, and I saw a really cool art car--actually, I don't know if it's really an art cr or just a car decorated for a certain occasion, but whatever. It's halfway down this page:
http://www.10eastern.com/foundphotos11.html
(BTW, the whole foundphotos site is awesome)
Here's one idea: divide the car into regions/areas (such as left side, right side, back, front). Each area can have a theme (chicks rock, durham, drag queens, bicycles. The themes could be announced/suggested in advance, and people interested in working on a certain area could bring materials specific to that theme. Plus, we can get some other materials together to have around too. We could also invite people to go on a materials shopping trip a couple weekends before and hit up scrap, thrifts, ac moore, etc.
I love the penny idea -- something about that seems so insane and absurb it totally cracks me up!
NIku, that's a great idea about asking people to bring materials for whatever theme they're interested in!
There are a few penny cars out there I think. The one in Harrod Blank's new movie was made by a guy who's kind of out there. He draws healing energy from the pennies or something -- wears penny clothes too. I don't think the pennies are as heavy as a couple of cars I've seen covered with a ceramic tile mosaic.
Oop! At first scan, I read "Chris Rock Builds a Car" and I thought, "you know, that's more of an old style Eddie Murphy / Robert Townshend kind of gag" but then I re-read.
Chris Rock is more than welcome at our art car workshop. But he'll have to pay the materials fee like everybody else.