THREE TRAVELING ART SHOWS OF THE AVENUE

This last Sunday as I was driving on Palace Avenue, I passed a classic 40's pickup all dolled up in sunflowers. In my rear view mirror I saw the sunflower truck pull into a driveway, I did a U-turn and parked near the driveway where the sunflower truck had parked. However by then the driver and passenger had entered the house. I knocked and a very pleasant and genial man opened the door, I asked a few questions and while doing so an equally pleasant open and smiling woman came up behind the man and identified herself as the owner and artist of the sunflowers on the truck.



I asked for permission to photograph the truck, was happily given permission by the lady, Susan, and as I was snapping with the camera phone, Susan casually mentioned another “art truck” with painted chilies parked behind the house. We walked back and I took this photo.


and again as I was taking the photo, Susan mentioned yet another truck parked a few blocks away at her studio. This one she called her “Carro de la Muerte”, or Cart of Death, a common theme in Mexican Folk Art. Drove to the Camino del Monte Sol location and took this photo. Actually was unable to get a good pic because of lack of sharpness using the camera phone, the painting images on the truck were not as distinctive as the other two trucks, plus the sun was glaring intensely directly on the truck . The side of the truck has a Carro de la Muerte painted on it with several bones, skulls, flowers and funereal icons spread about. The wonderful addition was the curtain type effects over the wheel wells pointing to casket bedding?



The auto as art is not uncommon in the Latino Community, all well and good, yet I yearn for the purely mythical thoughts of Andy Warhal somehow somewhere wafting like a fog in cyber space, his riff being the American Automobile, untouched from Detroit, as The Premier American Art Icon of the of the 20th Century.