‘Art Car’ Drivers Make a Pit Stop at Bottle Village

They rolled into town Friday like motorized hallucinations--the alien Virgin, the snarling snow leopard and the flaming tribute to chaos--and they parked in front of Bottle Village.

If only Grandma Prisbrey had built a garage.

For these are Art Cars, a hybrid offspring of car customization and folk art, and their owners seemed right at home among the pencil collages, bumper-chrome mosaics and beer-bottle walls of Bottle Village.

The wild rides and their drivers were en route Friday to Houston, for a massive April 19 gathering of nearly 200 like-minded car customizers from around the world--the Roadside Attractions Festival’s International Art Car Parade.

But they stopped off for a tour of Simi Valley’s most controversial artwork at the invitation of curator Daniel Paul, who says he plans to ride with them to the festival.

“I really relate to this place, it’s all recycled stuff,” said Philo Northrup, who lists Angeles Forest as his place of residence.

Called “Truck in Flux,” Northrup’s 1989 Ford Ranger stood at the curb, 3-D steel flames sprouting from its hood, an army of patchwork children’s toys crawling over its body like an infestation of plastic Frankensteinian nightmares.

“A lot of Art Car people are folk artists,” he said, smiling at the light that shone amber and blue through abandoned milk jugs and Milk of Magnesia bottles into the village’s Round House. “A lot of them are just like Grandma--they don’t consider themselves artists, but they’ve all created these vehicles out of found materials.”

Two teens biked past on Cochran Street, gaping at Scott Alan’s night-black ’61 VW ragtop with flames and constellations gracing its flanks and the glow-in-the-dark, alien-headed Virgin of Guadalupe beckoning from its hood.

“What the . . . ?” one said with gaping jaw.

Seattle’s Kelly Lyles said it all started with a Ford Pinto.

When she found herself too embarrassed to drive it, she turned it into “a Cowboy/Indian Pinto,” customizing it with paint and children’s toys.

When it died, she bought a 1989 Subaru wagon, she said. “But it was too white, and I went through withdrawal, so I had to change it, too.”

Now, “Leopard Bernstein” sports a healthy coat of spots and a snow leopard’s leering face on the hood. Plastic toy lions and tigers frolic across its dashboard, jungle print fabric covers the seats, and the license plate growls GRRRAFX--the name of her graphic-arts company.

“I also needed something to advertise my company,” admits Lyles, who carries through the jungle-cat theme from her leopard-spotted boots to her cheetah-print fez.

And with that, she grabbed her camera and stalked back into the place where doll’s heads grow on stalks, TV tubes sprout from the earth and the ground is paved with glittering fragments of glass.