Art Meets Automobile at ‘Blessing of Cars’

The Jesus-like figure, enrobed in purple and reaching 12 feet into the air, swayed back and forth in a gesture of blessing. The recipient of the figure’s symbolic benediction was another cardboard image--a tableau of choked freeway traffic.

A puppeteer’s semi-reverent nod to automobiles was the closest thing to a blessing of the cars Sunday at the city-sponsored “Blessing of the Cars” that drew several thousand people to Arroyo Seco Park in Highland Park.

Last year, a priest standing in a drive-through booth blessed an estimated 200 cars. But this year, because the city kicked in $5,000 to sponsor the art and custom car show, the unique religious ceremony was eliminated to avoid violating the constitutional separation of church and state, organizers said.

They kept the name, but flyers advertising the event emphasized that this was a non-religious art festival with a car theme.

Some bemoaned the loss of the rite, which drew on an old Latino tradition of seeking a blessing for major purchases. But others were unaware that it had been part of last year’s event.

Eddie Hernandez of Bellflower, whose truck is fitted with a television and VCR, a full bar and chromed brake shoes, brought the vehicle last year but said he did not know about the ritual. “My Blazer is in good hands anyway,” he said, as he polished the car’s chromed and painted engine. “If you start putting stolen parts in it . . . then maybe you need your car blessed.”

But Mary Anne Perez of Lincoln Heights said she was sorry to lose the blessing ceremony. “It’s nice to have that, so people can hold on to their religion and their roots,” she said. “When you start getting away from that, you have no distinction from other cultures.”

Sumi Haru, a program coordinator for the city Cultural Affairs Department, said the festival’s name probably will be changed next year to avoid confusion. But she said the devotion some residents lavish on their cars will remain a central theme in the event, advertised as honoring the relationship between the car and the family.

“You can see the care and money that people put into the cars and that it’s a very dear thing to them--almost as close to them as religion,” Haru said.

Many of the 100 cars competing Sunday were roped off and set up as shrines to chrome, mirrors, gold flake paint and plush carpets. One of the most lavishly appointed was a 1975 brown and orange Dodge van; a third of its exterior was covered in leather, which the owner said had cost $41,000. A Volkswagen Rabbit painted a luminescent nail polish pink was called “Picnic Basket.” It was parked on a red-checked tablecloth spread with a picnic meal and champagne.

Although the cars dominated the event, other artistic endeavors were honored: student paintings with car themes; pano arte drawings on handkerchiefs by inmates and ex-inmates, and murals by local graffiti artists.

The puppet show, commissioned by festival organizers and also titled “The Blessing of the Cars,” featured cardboard pedestrians with targets on their chests, a blockheaded mechanic who undulated in time to rock music, frenzied drivers in evening clothes and a dancing gasoline pump. “I wanted it to be like watching a ritual,” said puppeteer Stuart Vaughan.

He described the 12-foot-tall figure--its hands raised in benediction--as a “giant deity blessing the cars, blessing this event.”