Art Cars

One of the things I like most about Baltimore is that you never know what you’re going to see when you turn the corner. Today, I was taking a lot of clothes and household things to the Goodwill and saw a man, who was clearly an artist, buying up all of the naked Barbies in the store. When I went back out into the parking lot, it became clear to me who this man was… he is the owner of one of the many art cars you see in Baltimore.

Because Baltimore is home to both the Maryland Institute College of Art and the American Visionary Arts Museum, there are probably more art cars here than in most cities. According to Wikipedia, “An art car is a vehicle that has its appearance modified as an act of personal artistic expression”. Art cars are usually driven by the people who own them. One of our friends has a 1970’s Lincoln Continental, which is about 25 feet long, and he’s painted it with black chalkboard paint and lets people draw on it with chalk.Today’s art car actually had a theme: Adam & Eve in the Garden. There were hundreds of dolls, plastic figures, musical instruments, Mardi Gras beads, thermometers and more stuck on the car.

It’s certainly not going to win any awards for its gas mileage, but it certainly turns heads. While the artist and I were standing and talking, several cars pulled up and checked out the car.  Here’s where the Barbies are:Hundreds of babies and even more Barbies,Bears, which weren’t more than two inches tall, Buttons,and the Baby Jesus.This is why I love Baltimore.