Friday, July 25, 2008

Art Cars on parade!

I've been meaning to write something about our neighbors for some time. They are really quite interesting. M creates art cars, so there are always several parked in front and in back of the house. One time I saw M leaving the house dressed in a shaggy brown bear costume and wearing roller blades. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera at the time. But never fear! M is always dressing up and doing something else funny and crazy.

The other day we saw her pulling out of the drive with a new large contraption tied to the top of her car. It looked like a giant blue donut and was strung with lights. That's not too crazy considering the rest of her car is decorated to look like a polar bear. We ran into M on Saturday and found out the annual Art Car Parade was that night!

After dinner we drove down to the Lake of the Isles and started driving around looking for the parade of cars.

Aha! There they are!






And there's M!



And M's car:









After the parade, the cars (and other vehicles) parked at a nearby business. The creators mingled with the spectators and a good time was had by all.



The studded car - inside and out:




The Mercedes-Bonz:







This was one of our favorite cars, just because of the attention to detail. Notice the sprinklers on the hood of the car.







The faucet works!








Ahh, the shuttle van:





One of the stranger, home-made vehicles:









And of course, no Art Car Parade is complete without the obligatory human-powered bicycle car...



...the scooter...



...and the ugly old brown couch vehicle:



3 comments:

Stephanie said...

I just loved the line about unfortunately not having a camera handy when your neighbor was leaving... I often feel like the crazy neighbor when I march out and about in some getup, or under strange circumstances. Well, the rest of the visuals in this post made me feel fairly tame. :-) I LOVE art cars! My husband would die if I tried to make an art car..... although mayyybe.... maybe since my car is 13 years old I could get away with it?

Aimee said...

Well, there are many versions of art cars, some more tame than others. What you need is some rust spots on your car. Gotta paint those over, right? If you drive on salted roads in the winter, just don't get a car wash and you're well on your way to an art car! ;-)

Laurence Modithre said...

Heh, sounds like you got a pretty cool neighbor. An art car designer... there's something quite awesome about being that as an occupation, don't you think? It sounds like something you'd dream of as a kid.