Wild Wheels [Paperback]

Harrod Blank (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 2001

Art Cars represent a vital and ever-growing folk art form. Forty-two of these magnificent sculptures-on-wheels are featured in 127 photographs, complete with an essay about each artist. Ever wonder what could possess a driver to transform his or her car into an alligator, cover it with faucets, meticulously apply stained glass to every inch, or completely coat it with buttons? Satisfy your curiosity, and maybe even discover an inspiration to spice up your own driving experience in this lively book by Art Car documentarian Harrod Blank.

As a teenager, Blank didn’t want to be mistaken for a person as bland as his 1965 VW bug, so he started painting on it, attaching things to it, and attracting a heap of attention in a town where he became known for the car with the unforgettable name, “Oh My God!” Over time, people passing through town let him know that there were others like him around the country who had discovered the same irresistible canvas for self-expression. As a young filmmaker, Blank knew he had to go out there and document these kindred spirits.

Before long, he embarked upon a journey around the country to interview and photograph Art Car artists in the making of his feature documentary (also available from Amazon.com) and companion book, both entitled “Wild Wheels.” He found them in the most unexpected corners of the U.S., these folk artists who had no concern for traditional art venues, who wanted their art, their message, their self-expressive shrines out there on the streets.

In “Wild Wheels” we get a vivid glimpse of a range of these artists whose motivations, methods, and works of art are surprisingly varied, who may have only one thing in common: they’re all in this book!

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

"Art cars" are vehicles transformed by their creative owners into elaborately decorated statements of individual mobility. Blank, an independent filmmaker and art car aficionado, spent two years traveling the highways and byways of America in search of people who shared his unusual passion for artistically personalized transportation. The result was an independent documentary film (also entitled Wild Wheels ) and this book: a zany testament to the far reaches of the creative spirit enlivened by more than 100 color photographs and descriptions of 42 attention-grabbing autos with humorous names like the Beaded Bug, the Hippomobile, and the Grass Car. The book also contains brief stories about the artists who created them, providing insight into the ideas and emotions that sparked this novel pop art form. Recommended for YA and general collections.
- Eric C. Shoaf, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence, R. I.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

In the late 1980s filmmaker Harrod Blank crisscrossed the country in his elaborately adorned car, “Oh My God!,” looking for other “art cars” to costar in his film “Wild Wheels.” And find them he did, eventually filming over forty cars and interviews with the artists who created them. Decorated in a wide variety of styles and on themes ranging from religion to barnyard animals to general zaniness, these art cars are attention-getting testaments to their owners’ artistic self-expression. This book features forty-two of these amazing apparitions. Among the mobile masterpieces pictured are the “Lightmobile,” a Volkswagen Beetle strung with 1,400 computer-programmed lights that can be made to flash messages; the “Grass Car,” which is planted from top to bottom and side to side with living, growing grass; “Cowasaki,” a motorcycle that has been transformed to look like a cow; the “Toy Car Limo,” driven by Darrell “The Clown” for the sole purpose of making children smile; the “Mad Cad,” a 1960 Cadillac Sedan de Ville festooned with thousands of beads and rhinestones and sporting a flock of jewel-encrusted birds; and the ever-popular “Hippomobile,” a mustang convertible covered with a brass-plated hippopotamus. A fascinating and lively book, “Wild Wheels” includes over 100 color photographs and a brief essay about each artist and his or her creation.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 95 pages
• Publisher: Blank Books; 2 edition (November 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 093362168X
• ISBN-13: 978-0933621688
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 8.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,429,715 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Harrod Blank Biography

Born February 4, 1963, Harrod Blank is a California native who grew up in the Bonny Doon Mountains of Santa Cruz where he attended high school and college. In 1989 he moved to Berkeley, where he currently lives part time.

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 currently in release. Thirteen 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, Blank Books 2007). 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.

Blank's mother Gail Perrin Blank, an erotic ceramist, died in February 2005 which prompted a major career change. 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.

Not only will the center be a place for art to be created and viewed, but it will be a work of art in itself. The gallery space will be opening in the Spring, 2012, the residencies in the Spring of 2014 and the other elements by the end of 2017.

Currently Blank is releasing Automorphosis, and is editing on Burning Man: the Movie, a documentary film Thirteen years in the making about the radical arts festival.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tired of being a commuter car clone? This book's for you!, July 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Wild Wheels (Paperback)

Talk about the power of books! Six years ago, some roadside preacher in a bus covered windshield-to-tail lights in bible verses handed me a book called Wild Wheels. He thought I would enjoy it, seeing as how I was driving a Ford Granada covered in graffiti, and therefore somewhat of a kindred spirit. Well, he was right. Years later, I'm still driving that Granada and mostly thanks to writer/photographer Harrod Blank's campaign to make the American highway a safer place for art. In the stories and bright colorful photos of Wild Wheels, I found the inspiration to turn my graffitied junker into a driving dream, a 2-door art museum on wheels. And though Wild Wheels won't likely have so dramatic an effect on every reader, its universal theme of self-realization through expression will touch every reader's heart.

Featuring over 100 color photos and fascinating anecdotal peeks into the lives of the artists who made the cars, Wild Wheels continues to introduce the world to the pioneers of the now popular car art movement.

The characters and cars in Wild Wheels are so genuine and so funky and so genuinely funky as captured by Blank that they'll have you wondering "Is it real? Did somebody make all this up? Am I really bolting antlers to my hood?" For answers to these and other wild questions, buy this book!! I loved it, and everyone I show it to wants a copy.

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Entertaining - To Be Seen To Be Believed!, January 6, 2009

By 

Craig Connell (Lockport, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wild Wheels (Paperback)

This is my favorite "coffee table book" of all time. Yeah, it's a smaller than the normal "coffee book," but that's what it is: a book you can pick up, flip to any page, and enjoy a few minutes of reading and visual pleasure....every time!

It's simply a book showing what bizarre people across the country have done with their cars: growing grass on them, pasting thousands of artificacts on them; installing a swimming pool in the bed of a truck; having an old VW covered in lights, on and on. The artwork on some of these automobiles is just incredbile.

I have the first edition book, printed in 1994, and it has quality hard-glossed paper so the photographs come through perfectly and you get a good look at each strange vehicle and owner. In addition, author Harrod Blank's description of the people, their cars and why they did what they did are all fascinating and mostly very funny. Blank is quite a character, himself. These weird cars reflect their owners and.....well, see for yourself!

"Wild Wheels" is a wild book that has been entertaining me for 15 years.

5.0 out of 5 stars The original art car book, August 26, 2008

By 

Michael A. Duvernois (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Wild Wheels (Paperback)

Here is Harrod Blank's first art car, and his camera van, with early Burning Man art cars (pre-"mutant vehicle"). This book ties in with the movie "Wild Wheels" and is essential for tracing the 1980s origin of contemporary art cars.