The Art Truck

A large truck or van, wrapped in primed canvas with paints and brushes stored inside, parks at truck stops or urban areas and lets people paint on it.

Art Van

Art Truck was inspired by my fascination with American trucking and having the Taco Truck for lunch while working for video game companies in Silicon Valley. Have you ever had a chance to experience a Taco Truck? Some people swear by it. It is the kind of product that comes to you.

A couple of years ago I did a 3000 miles solo drive across the American South. I drove I-10 through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico and made frequent stops along the highway, at rest areas, and truck stops. I have always been fascinated with American trucking and roads. The most colorful thing to look at on the road was nicely decorated large trucks. I drove multiple times between Florida and New York City and thought wouldn’t it be cool to stop at truck stops and rest areas and have spontaneous art installations and have people paint, right there on the road?

The truck or van will be wrapped in primed canvas, and paint and brushes will be stored inside. The truck /van will make multiple stops along highways and urban areas and people will paint on it. The resulting painting will be an accumulation of multiple painting locations.

In my mind the Art Truck will be like a piece of Americana, a Roadside Attraction where the audience is the performer.

Imagine a large colorful truck stops, a large canvas unfolds, out comes paint, trampolines and brushes and all kinds of wonderful things. People are invited to paint.

For large cities like New York City an Art Van can deliver art on demand at various events, markets, and block parties. It could be parked by public squares and parks and record people’s thoughts and ideas on important days, or just a Tuesday.

I sent the idea for the Art Truck to the European Cultural Foundation’s Idea Camp

Here is my completely unbridled proposal:

A large truck wrapped in primed canvas will travel around Europe and serve as a Mobile Art Camp (MAC) - it will deliver wearable canvas pieces, water-based paint, and brushes on sticks to public spaces around Europe. The general public in the public spaces will be invited to wear the canvas pieces and paint on them and the truck. The resulting canvas pieces will be collected and physically and digitally stored, eventually, all pieces from all locations will be sewn together and mounted to compose a cross-cultural painting of Europe.

MAC will allow for the democratization of the public space in that it will allow non-destructive creative intervention by individuals and the community, an act usually reserved for public figures and art practitioners.  It will transform the individual experience of passive consumption of the public space into a collective memory of a creative act. The act of wearing canvas pieces in the public space will re-introduce the idea of contact and tangibility of personal space within the context of digital society and the experience of the public space. 

By engaging people from different walks of life who are temporarily unified by the collective experience of a public space, MAC will create a momentary community bound by the act of collective and cooperative creation within the public space. MAC will attempt to unite individuals within a public space who may be otherwise segregated by economic disparity, refused access to transformative experiences, and means to positively impact local culture.

---------------------

Imagine you are standing on a public square in a small village. A small delivery truck wrapped in white canvas pulls up, paint and brushes are taken out and people are invited to paint.

The only permanent result of this MAC operation will be the collaboratively painted pieces. A permanent MAC base camp will operate a website and support a MAC app, collect and store installation pieces, and work with European Cultural organizations to fund the collection, store, and exhibit the installation pieces. 

The ultimate goal will be to collect the installation pieces and sew them together into a large Pan-European map-like tapestry, which will become a part of the European collective cultural heritage.