Transforming Cars Into Moving Art
In Ojai you can drive a car or you can drive a Carmen.
The difference is as blatant as the tribal geometrics festooning the body, the painted lizards and chile peppers on the hood, the Mayan astrological signs, the rainbow of swirls and spirals, the touch of the artist Carmen Abelleira-White as opposed to the brush of the auto painter Earl Scheib.
Last year there were no Carmens.
Now half a dozen ply the lanes and highways of the art-conscious town. Owners of three other cars are considering a Carmenizing soon. “It’s almost like getting a tattoo,” said Abelleira- White. “It takes people a while to figure out what they want.”
Equipped with everything from a living lawn to thousands of chicken bones, art cars have spawned national gatherings, Web pages and celebrities.
In Ventura, a group of artists led by M.B. Hanrahan put together a wild, scorpion-like car called Metamorphosis, but nobody locally has sent as many art cars onto the road for everyday use as Abelleira-White.
At 37, she is a Cuban-born free spirit, an artist who has never taken an art class, a painter, an assembler of found objects, a creator of eye-popping chairs, of old doors painted pink and laden with what-nots, of zany shrines to Elvis and Marilyn Monroe.
She lives with her husband, science teacher David White, and their two children, Canyon and Sunny, in the middle of an orange grove. The home/studio/gallery is called Art Detour, and it is bursting with her work.
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Her 1985 Volvo station wagon--until last year an unremarkable 200,000-mile work horse--sits outside, painted with an intricate design that looks like an ancient Mexican circuit board.
It started as just a bit of decorative edging in enamel paint. Before long, however, Carmen’s muse took the wheel.
“I didn’t start out knowing what it would look like,” she said. “It’s the shape and lines of the car that dictate what looks best on it.”
Next, she did her husband’s car.
Then friends started signing on for the same treatment, paying fees of $1,000 and up depending on the work’s complexity.
Alasdair Coyne, an environmentalist who runs a landscaping business in Ojai, wanted a crop-circle motif on his beat-up 1967 El Camino but otherwise gave Abelleira-White free rein.
The result: Aztec figures running the length of the hood. One wields a croquet mallet--Coyne plays croquet--and the other holds a flute of champagne. The dings and dents that have accrued from 31 years on the road are all but invisible beneath the intricate patterns.
“She asked me what colors and I said whatever,” Coyne said. “I’ve been a big fan of Carmen’s art, and a minor collector.”
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Karen Kaminsky had lizards and cacti and cheetah spots, among other things, emblazoned on the 1990 Honda Accord her mother had given her.
“I sent her some pictures and asked, ‘Am I still your daughter?’ ” Kaminsky said.
Her mother responded: “Yes--just as long as you never ask me to drive it.”
John Diehl and Julie Christensen sent a flow of ideas for their ’86 Volvo wagon back home from Florida, where Diehl was acting in a Sam Shepard play.
“We were dying to see what she’d have for us when we got back,” said Christensen, a singer who produces her own CDs.
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The two were greeted at the airport by their elaborately redone wagon--complete with their Mayan astrological signs and some symbols they liked from the I Ching.
“It was great,” Christensen said. “We were jumping all over the place when we got picked up in it.”
That is high praise for an artist who has been honing her craft full time for less than four years.
Abelleira-White was a bilingual education teacher in Los Angeles and Ojai until her second child was born. It was then she decided to stay home and pursue what she loved the most.
Her work has a colorful Caribbean flair, largely owing to her childhood in Cuba. Her parents had emigrated to New York but were trapped in Cuba during a visit back home in 1960. Her father was forced to work in the sugar-cane fields for 10 years before officials abruptly booted the family out with only the clothes on their backs. Ten-year-old Carmen needed to borrow another child’s shoes for the hasty trip to Los Angeles.
“It was a traumatic way of leaving family and country,” she said.
Life now is more settled. Abelleira-White volunteers at the local schools. She raises her kids and does her art, some of which is on display through Oct. 3 at a Pasadena gallery called the Folk Tree Collection. When she needs excitement, she takes a drive.
“The best thing about driving an art car is connecting with all kinds of people,” she said. “Kids love it, old folks love it. People give high signs all over the place. It’s not just for Deadheads in VW buses.”
