26 Art Car Postcards [Cards]

Harrod Blank (Author, Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 17, 2008

This is a collection of 26 Art Car post cards representing some of the more prominent and finest contemporary art cars. There is a cover and back card to protect the interior cards and the package comes shrink wrapped. Ideal for sending your friends and loved ones a wacky card.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Harrod Blank Biography When Harrod Blank first realized that his '65 VW Beetle could be treated as a canvas, the result was Oh My God! . Painted like a beach ball with a bumper of plastic fruit & rubber chickens, a chalkboard on back and a TV on the roof, the car was the catalyst for his remarkable career. Initially, Blank thought he was the only one in the world with an Art Car, and at times felt quite alienated. This would change, as he gradually learned from supporters that there were other such cars, spread out across the country. Drawing from what he had learned from his father, filmmaker Les Blank, and the BA in Theater Arts/Film he earned at UC Santa Cruz in 1986, Blank began photographing other Art Cars. Subsequently, he raised money through private investors and took out loans as needed to finance the 64-minute documentary he dreamed of making: Wild Wheels. To his credit, over 55 million people worldwide have now seen the film. Blank initially distributed Wild Wheels, featuring 46 Art Cars and their respective artists, by driving Oh My God! with the film to 50 cities across the country. Publicity from the tour gained the interest of PBS, which broadcast the film repeatedly as a National Special in 1993. The following year, Blank's photography was featured in a companion book, Wild Wheels (Pomegranate, 1994; Blank Books, 2001), which was named Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Blending his passion for Art Cars and his love of photography, Blank was inspired by a dream to attach 1,705 cameras to a 1972 Dodge van. Cleverly hiding ten working cameras among the rest, Blank had finally found a way to capture on film the public s candid expressions of awe and delight. In 1995, Blank drove the Camera Van to New York City for its official debut and shot over 5,000 photographs for a photography exhibit, I ve Got A Vision. In 1995, still enthusiastic about the beauty and power of Art Cars, Blank began production of a feature-length sequel to Wild Wheels. A short version of the film (Driving the Dream, 29 mins.) was broadcast on TBS's National Geographic Explorer in October 1997 to help raise money for the epic feature length film Automorphosis which is due out in Spring 2008. Twelve years in the making, Automorphosis is considered Harrod's life's work up to this point. Blank made his third Art Car in 1998, an interactive mariachi-themed music mobile called Pico De Gallo, later unveiled in his new book, Art Cars: the Cars, the Artists, the Obsession, the Craft (Lark Books, 2002). Gene Shalet heralded the book on the Today Show as his favorite holiday gift suggestion. The Petersen Automotive Museum hosted a major exhibition of Art Cars in Spring 2003, of which Harrod Blank was Guest Curator. Currently Blank is completing post production on Automorphosis, is in production on Burning Man: the Movie, a documentary film ten years in the making about the radical arts festival. In August of 2005, Blank embarked upon the making of a visionary center for the arts in Douglas Arizona on the border of Mexico called Rancho Del Arte. This bilingual center will feature arts above ground and below and will include Art Car World, a museum dedicated to Art Cars, the Ceramic Cafe integrated with ceramic arts and mosaics, Highway Cinema, an outdoor theater specializing in independent Mexican and American films, and an underground system of caves featuring shrines to the dead.

Product Details

• Cards: 26 pages
• Publisher: Blank Books; First edition (May 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0933621728
• ISBN-13: 978-0933621725
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,101,695 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)