Category: On the Detour

This Friday kicks off probably the most moving event of the year, not just because it is wacky, colorful, and hysterical, but because it’s literally on wheels. The ArtCar Fest 2010 will fire up in Berkeley on Friday and roadtrip its way to Sacramento by that afternoon. The fun lasts through Sunday in Sacramento.

I caught up with Costas Schuler A.K.A “The Pen Guy” who created the Mercedes Pens and says riding an art car is a lifestyle.

“This car is an excuse to have a conversation—it’s a context for community,” explains Schuler who says he met 4 people yesterday just at the gas station.

“For me, its an everyday thing. Once you have an art car, you can never drive a regular car again. Where’s the party?” says Schuler who attended his first ArtCar Fest in 2005 with barely any pens glued to it–his car now holds over 10,000 pens.

Check out this video I created on the Mercedes Pens last year:

For the past 20 years the San Francisco Dump has quite literally been trying not to let the trash go to waste.  The Dump has hosted 80 artists to date who have spent their residencies turning trash into treasure by scouring the wasteland to create art made entirely from trash.

The resulting work includes everything from bottle cap trashion fashion to tricycle table hybrids.  But perhaps the most shocking art is the art you would never guess spawned from a dumpster dive.

“Its really evolved what people initially thought of as recycled art,” says curator Sharon Spain.

The show holds artwork created throughout the last 20 years.

“It’s the only program of its kind in the country,” says Spain.  “The idea behind the program is more important today than it was 20 years ago.”

You can check out the exhibit Art at the Dump: Twenty Years of the Artist in Residence Program at Recology at Intersection 5M located at 925 Mission Street @ 5^th Street in San Francisco.  The exhibit is open 12PM-6PM daily through Sept. 25^th. Visit http://sunsetscavenger.com/AIR/ for more info.

Above is a video I produced last year on the Artist-in-Residency program, and below are some photos from the current exhibit.

You name it they’ve done it to Barbie this year at the Altered Barbie exhibit in San Francisco.  She’s been iced, melted, de-limbed, crucified, and decapitated in the name of art.

Co-Founder Julie Anderson says what makes Barbie interesting is she has so many conflicting connotations.  She’s beautiful and wealthy– owns fancy cars and clothes.  But on the flip side, she’s associated with anorexia and greed.  She’s an impossible ideal.

“When you start altering her she becomes a little more real,” says Anderson who started the month-long exhibit in 2002 and calls this year’s show sophisticated and subdued.

“She’s probably the first icon in history that its okay to play with her and alter her and really identify with her.  She can be kinky, sexy, innocent–she can become some of the desires or hidden aspects of your own personality,” says Anderson.

The exhibit runs through October 1st at 50 Shotwell Street and 11 Grove Street. Tonight’s Artists Reception at the Shotwell location will have live Barbie and Ken, poetry, comedy, and films from 5-11 pm.