VW Door Art Offers Window on the Weird

Now that we’ve skated through the Apocalypse, we can quit worrying and grapple with the really important questions, like: What happens when you give 17 artists 17 old Volkswagen doors?

This is not a trick question. It’s flesh-and-blood reality up in Ojai, an enlightened community packed with old Volkswagen doors and the artists who love them.

Gayel Childress is one. She runs the G. Childress Gallery, which is showing--you guessed it--old Volkswagen doors, rescued from the salvage yard and turned into art.

“We schlepped them up here and stored them in a backyard,” she said. “Then we each picked out one that talked to us.”

Hers spoke in breathy, urgent, passionate terms. And in Hawaiian.

It’s painted tropical colors. When it’s up and running for the show’s formal opening on Jan. 15, dry-ice vapors will pour out the window. It’s adorned with a grass skirt, and a flower necklace, and it’s called “My First Lei.”

That’s how it is when you give 17 artists 17 old Volkswagen doors, and call their collected works “Adoorable U.” There will always be some jokers, thinking they can have fun with something as high-minded and profound as art.

Lucy M. Harvey went so far as to call her creation--adorned with bright colors, exclamation points and a centerpiece of smashed headlight glass--”Wow!”

“Why ‘Wow’?” I asked.

“Because in the last month I got Zuka, my first dog ever, and I got engaged, and it’s been all sparkles and lights, and Wow!”

A couple of weeks ago, Harvey’s fiance took her up in a chartered helicopter. They flew over their ranch, where on a barn roof, he had spelled out in bright tape two words that were as visible to firefighters in planes as they were to them: “Marry me.”

Hence: Wow!

Of course, there are more serious doors as well. They make statements about such grim topics as oil depletion, drive-by shootings and the role of the automobile in the decline of civilization.

Linda Taylor, a local art teacher, called her door: “The Garden After the Expulsion.”

(Old joke: What is the first automotive reference in the Bible?

Answer: The Lord drove Adam and Eve out, in a Fury.)

Yesterday, Michael Gump was at the gallery, putting the final touches on “Unicorn Universe.”

“It’s about the origin of life,” he said, “with the sun separating from the Earth. Of course, I throw science out the window entirely.”

Gump, an artist who also does a comedy act with a 1,300-foot-long sock puppet, was adjusting tiny hot-pink unicorns on a rugged field of green papier-mache studded with colored bulbs. He was wearing dreadlocks, a yellow ruffled shirt, plaid pants, a fleece vest, and a leather belt with an enormous brass buckle that said BOB.

“More unicorns,” he murmured, scanning his work before heading home to create additional creatures.

Of course, the show isn’t just about old Volkswagen doors.

The doors are a vehicle--pardon the expression--for drawing attention to the art cars plying Ojai’s highways and byways.

Art cars are ordinary vehicles decorated with mosaics, portraits, bones, living lawns, bits of ceramic tile, huge claw-like gizmos--anything that satisfies the artist’s need at the moment of creation. About a dozen will be on hand for the exhibit’s opening, after a honking, yelling, flashing-the-lights, spontaneous parade through town.

“They’re points of joy,” said curator Jan Sanchez, whose old VW Thing was transformed last summer into a mobile version of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”

“There isn’t a person who doesn’t smile when they see me coming. Kids yell at me from their yards, saying what a cool car I have.”

Also on hand for the opening will be George Wilson, an Ojai mechanic and musician. An old trombone man, Wilson specializes in squeezing sweet tunes out of carburetor parts, valves and other automotive paraphernalia.

Needless to say, door prizes will be given.

Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.