Oh my God! by Harrod Blank

From the Art Cars series — one man’s obsession with America's mobile masterpieces

Photographs by Harrod Blank

ARIZONA — In 1977 I was a freshman at Santa Cruz High School, a place where the kind of car you had, if you even had a car, was a big deal. I really wanted a Mustang but all I could afford was a $600 white 1965 VW Beetle. Embarrassed to drive it, I painted a rooster on the passenger’s door — I was raising exotic poultry at the time. My popularity rose quickly after that, so I was encouraged to keep decorating. I covered the entire car in objects until it became known as “Oh My God!” — the number one response from people who see it. 

What I like most about riding an art car is seeing people totally blown away. They can’t believe what’s before their eyes. For years I tried to take pictures of their reactions, but as soon as they saw a camera, they would act differently. Then I had a dream about a car covered in cameras, and the next day I woke up and thought, “I’m going to do a camera van”. It took me two years to figure out how to make it. It has more than 2,500 cameras on it, ten of them functioning film cameras, and it really works — it takes pictures! It’s like I’m on a spaceship and everywhere I go people are staring at me. I have the time of my life driving around taking pictures of people’s expressions as they see it. 

I’ve spent my life documenting art-car culture. I’ve made a calendar, two books and two documentary feature films on the subject. In 2005, having three art cars of my own as well as a few collected from friends, I was having trouble finding parking. I opened up a museum in Douglas, Arizona, called Art Car World. We now have 21 cars on show. It’s still under construction, but when the building is finished there will be a replica of “Oh My God!” on the top with a beacon of green light and a hot tub inside.

When I was photographing art cars, I always focused on individuality. It wasn’t just the art car that was of interest; really it was the person who created it. The product is this mobile, 

Lucia Lucas, a modern diva

The transgender opera star on life as a female baritone

Photographs by Alice Neale
Interview by Lucy Nurnberg

Coat — Givenchy

When I'm on stage, I can gather all the feelings that build up throughout the day or week and let them all out. 

My deep voice often has me playing angry characters, so the screaming that I hold back in response to intolerant people on the street can be released upon the audience. 

I enjoy playing the villain, because there is a stillness and elegance to them. I recently sang the 12-minute aria of Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer, completely naked, at The Glory, Muse and the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London. The Dutchman is an outcast and misunderstood; I can very strongly relate to his journey. I made the performance a story about my transition. It wasn’t fetishised, it was about me and my body and getting comfortable. 

Afterwards, I got a letter from someone in the audience who is intersex, presenting as female. They assumed that I was like them — they saw my naked body and saw a woman’s body, not a trans woman’s. That was very gender confirming.

Six shots of coffee a day is normal for me, and I have an energy drink about an hour before I go on stage. I like to think about my performance as having the right energy. Usually I have too little. If I need it right away, I’ll jump up and down. If my heart rate is too high, I’ll do breathing exercises to lower it. 

At university, when I was about 18, I worked with an opera singer who was 45. I said: “I really like opera, what should I do?” He said: “Get a day job until you’re 40.” If you have a heavy baritone voice, like I do, you usually don’t start professionally until you’re at least 30. I would have worked in computers if I didn’t pursue opera — but I’m not yet 40 and I’ve done a lot in my career. 

In performances, I play men about 90 per cent of the time. My singing voice hasn’t changed since I transitioned. I try to step into my character every rehearsal and performance. I wouldn’t want a member of the audience to think a woman was playing the character unless they looked down at their programme. 

Home is wherever my wife is. We met and fell in love 13 years ago at California State University, where we were studying opera. We got together when she crashed my Halloween party; I was the devil and she was a fairy.

We have a home in Wuppertal, near Düsseldorf, but because we’re both freelance artists we’re always on the road.Thankfully we live in the age of Skype and global communication. 

It wasn’t until I was five or six that I learnt that boys and girls were different. I was an only child and I played with Lego and educational toys, so my first exposure to a gendered society was when I went to school. I was told I was not a girl, but I knew I was not a boy. 

The advice I would give to trans kids is to be insistent in what you know to be true. Let the professionals diagnose you, but don’t let the corrections of conservative society tell you who you should be. If you have a bad home life, get good grades so you can move to a big city for college. From there, you can make anything happen. I hope that every trans child can get puberty blockers if they need them, but they should know that transition after puberty is possible. I didn’t begin my transition until the age of 33 and I am still very happy. 

I came out in May 2014. I knew for sure that I was transitioning in late October 2013, but the medical journey, especially in Germany, is heavily regulated and I had to wait till that was well on its way.

I came out to the opera community at a ball with my wife — she wore a tux and I wore a dress. People didn’t recognise me at first — they recognised my wife, looked at me and eventually they figured it out. Being able to see their genuine reactions was helpful; I came out the next week. I told the intendant that I liked my job and hoped I could continue to do it, but this was something I had to do for myself; it was something I’d been putting it off forever. He said: “OK, how does this was something I had to do for myself; it was something I’d been putting it off forever. He said: “OK, how does this work?” I replied: “Well, nobody’s ever done it before.” 

People at Karlsruhe, my opera house, were shocked. I ended up telling my story a lot. I went to the canteen every day for about a month and basically hung out there for hours. I talked with anybody who wanted to talk and tried to be really open. I could never be stealth at work — there was too much internet history under my old name — so I decided to be in advocacy. I write articles for anyone who wants to know more. 

Jacket — model’s own, jewellery — Bill Skinner, cane — stylist’s own (Alexander McQueen)

I am proud of my gender and trans status, but people on the street don’t need to know. Never out a trans person because you could be exposing them to someone dangerous. Since presenting as a woman, the biggest change is my awareness of danger. I take more taxis now when before I felt safe to walk alone. 

Knowing that sexism exists and seeing it clearly is very different from having it turned on you. I expect trans misogyny, but the first time I was called into an office and yelled at, and then told not to be emotional, I was very disturbed. 

A masculine face typically has an angular jaw line, a protruding brow bone, a downward-turned nose, an M hairline and no Cupid’s bow on the upper lip. I had surgery to bring the dimensions and appearance of my face into the female range. In my consultation, my surgeon noted that my nose was upturned and that I lacked an Adam’s apple so I wouldn’t need surgery to alter them. It was lucky because both could have interfered with my singing. Since having the surgery, I can go in public with little or no make-up and be read as female.

Right now, I’m most comfortable with my body when I’m wearing no clothes. I love the shape of my body since transitioning. Despite being about 6ft tall with a large bone structure, my fat distribution is clearly female. I don’t need to play tricks with fashion to balance out my shape, my body is shaped well without clothes. I also love how soft my skin is now.

Reactions to my transition have been polarising. Some conservative opera critics have gone so far as to tell me not to transition so I will stay in the industry. 

In mainstream opera they’ve been queering it for a long time. Lots of productions will switch the genders of roles or drag up performers. But when you have a trans person doing it, all of a sudden some people’s heads explode. The same people who wouldn’t care if it was a man in the dress, suddenly freak out when there’s a trans woman playing that role. 

There are lots of trans singers out there, but way more are in the closet than out. I’ve had friends who I’ve sang with for five years who assumed that I was done with opera because I was transitioning. I’m like, “Did I say I was quitting?” No, I’m going to keep doing it and I’m going to do it better than I’ve done it before. 

On the brighter side of things, my supporters have been very enthusiastic and lots of directors have been excited to work with me. This autumn I’m working on a production of The Tales of Hoffmann with four directors, in which I’m playing three of the four male characters as female. As soon as you change the gender of one character it switches the dynamic of all the other characters. It plays games with the entire production. I’m also part of a new group called oedipa, where the end goal is forming a queer opera company. 

I look forward to singing at any house that is ready for world-class opera. 

It’s very powerful to take your identity into your own hands — most people don’t ever get to choose a name for themselves. My last name now was my first name at birth. It was given to me because it was my great-grandmother’s maiden name and would have been the end of that line. I chose Lucia because it’s the Italian, feminine form of my old name. I’m proud of what I have accomplished in my life even before I transitioned and I’m not trying to erase any of that history. Now, if someone slips up and calls me by my old name, I can say: “Why so formal? Just call me Lucia.”

Credits: Assistant: Hannah Burton; styling: Rachael J Vick; make-up: Naomi Serene; retouching: Signe Emma

Pantsula, Pantsula, Pantsula

Photographs by Chris Saunders
Words by Daniela Goeller

“Pantsula is everything to me and everything is pantsula: I dress pantsula, I walk pantsula — I even talk pantsula”

Sello Modiga, Real Actions Pantsula, Orange Farmsula, Orange Farm

In the late 1970s, a new subculture took shape in the townships of South Africa. Young fashionistas began dressing up in expensive American and European labels and parading through the streets, treading carefully along dusty dirt roads to preserve their immaculate white socks and fine leather shoes. The subculture became known as “pantsula”, supposedly derived from a Zulu word that describes sticking out one’s buttocks or waddling like a duck.

A decade later, in the late 1980s, pantsula emerged as a powerful dance style, inspired by the gestures and movements of these stylish youth. A blend of traditional and modern dance combined with exaggerated everyday gestures, pantsula is an entertaining form of storytelling that includes mime, clowning, acrobatics and magic tricks. Some of the core movements referenced the fashionista’s walking. For young people growing up in the final days of apartheid, pantsula became their main form of expression in a time of great political instability.  

According to its dancers, pantsula can trace its roots back to the 1940s and Sophiatown, a multiracial suburb of Johannesburg known as “little Paris”, “little Harlem” or the “Chicago of South Africa” that is renowned for its international heritage and being home to elite writers, jazz musicians and some notorious gangsters. With these influences, and its connections to Marabi music and the illicit shebeen drinking bars, pantsula became known as the “dance of thugs”.

Via Vyndal, a pantsula crew from Alexandra, chose their name (a distortion of “vandal”) with reference to the bad reputation that sticks to the youth of their township. When performing, they adopt the same dress-code as the gangsters, because they like the style, but do not associate with violence. As Sandile Nqulunga explains, “We want to show people that dressing in a certain way doesn’t make you a bad person: we are artists and we like to entertain people”.

Pantsula is a culture of hustling, engaging wit and skill. “Pantsula is about survival,” says Vusi Mdoyi, a dancer from Katlehong; “like when a cat falls on its feet from high up, absorbing the shock in its body and in its bones.” The dance is fast, highly energetic and extremely challenging. It requires long hours of training and daily practice. Becoming a member of a crew provides many talented and unemployed young people with a structure in life, as well as some income. The leaders of pantsula are respected in their communities for taking the youth off the streets and giving them a sense of belonging. As the dominant urban dance form in South Africa, pantsula has reached theatre stages and street-dance festivals around the world. Online, the catchphrase is PANTSULA 4LYF — with LYF standing for “Live Your Freedom”.

Circuit Board Truck by Doc Atomic

From the Art Cars series — one man’s obsession with America's mobile masterpieces

Photographs by Harrod Blank

NEW MEXICO — When you drive an art car every day for 30-plus years you kind of forget that it’s different; it’s just your goddamn car. So when you go to buy a quart of milk one morning, feeling a bit hungover, and you come out of the store to find a very happy, emotionally-elevated crowd around your vehicle — it’s a pain in the ass, but you make their day and damn if it doesn’t make yours too. 

I view art cars as an artistic protest against the materialistic, consumer-oriented society we live in. Quite simply, the automobile is a consumer product that rapidly loses value from the moment it is purchased. You, as an individual, never lose value. 

The joy that it brings to people who cannot themselves “art car”, for whatever reason, is quite simply amazing. Most folks really seem to need an excuse to lighten up. I guess my car and I have become that excuse. My car means something to me, but it sure means something to a lot of other people and I never expected that. My car and I have a wonderful ability to bring a smile in the most unexpected circumstances. My car doesn’t do it; I don’t do it. But somehow together we pull that off.

In the early Nineties I had a truck called Home on the Strange that was painted the exact same colour and material as my house, stuccoed and tiled inside and out, with a living cactus garden in the bed of the truck. I was driving back from the art car parade in Houston, crossing back into New Mexico, when I found myself being trailed by a police car. Although I was driving home totally sober, I had a cooler full of beer and whisky next to me in the cab for my arrival home. 

When I was pulled over, it turned out the officer — who happened to be the sheriff — had stopped me for transporting indigenous plants across state lines without a licence! He ended up escorting me 75 miles to the next county — illegal plants, alcohol and all — to make sure there was no trouble.

Cork Truck by Jan Elftmann

From the Art Cars series — one man’s obsession with America's mobile masterpieces

Photographs by Harrod Blank

MINNESOTA — A friend in Houston, Texas, invited my husband and me to visit during the annual Art Car weekend. I was blown away and starstruck. As an artist I couldn’t believe I had never thought of the car as my canvas before. 

I decided I had to make an art car, but with what? My husband, Dave, reminded me about the bags and bags of corks I had in the attic that I’d saved from the restaurants I worked in while I was at art school. 

So the Cork Truck was born: a 1987 Mazda B2200 covered with 10,000 wine and champagne corks That would be a bottle a day for 27 years! That’s the top question people ask me. The second is: “Does it float?” 

The science side of me got interested in the story of cork. The material comes from the bark of the cork oak tree that only grows around the Mediterranean and lives to be 200-300 years old. Cork doesn’t absorb moisture, doesn’t burn, and its best quality is that when it is compressed it returns to its original shape. We are going to Portugal to see the cork trees for my 60th birthday.

I’ve driven the Cork Truck all over the country, but my favourite memory is pulling up to a stop light in Minneapolis as a large woman was crossing the street. She stretched out her arms and gave Corky a huge hug and yelled: “I love this car!” Then she blew me a kiss and carried on down the road.

Fortune-Telling Lion by Gretchen Baer

From the Art Cars series — one man’s obsession with America's mobile masterpieces

Photographs by Harrod Blank

ARIZONA — I spent two wild years of my life before the mast of a home-built dragon-shaped art raft that I built with my ex-husband. We lived year-round off-anchor, without mooring or docking, between Provincetown and New York City. Our adventure ranged from magical to Moby Dick-scary. We had no phone or way to contact people, and our dinghy motor was 10hp and temperamental. When the raft, and the marriage, ended up on the rocks, I returned to dry land. 

I created the Great Fortune-Telling Lion car as a totem of my personal strength after the break-up. Having returned to Martha’s Vineyard after two years at sea with what turned out to be a rafting cult — who knew that even existed! — making this almost life-size lion brought back my strength. I painted the car with images I considered lucky and glued the lion on the roof. I made the eyes light up so it could see my future, my good fortune — which, by the way, has so far turned out to be fantastic! 

Other than a trip across country, the Great Fortune-Telling Lion was a daily driving car, but it brought me to a new home and new beginnings. I drove it back to Bisbee, Arizona, where I have called home ever since. 

Leopard Bernstein by Kelly Lyles

From the Art Cars series — one man's obsession with America's mobile masterpieces

Photographs by Harrod Blank

WASHINGTON — I started with a 1979 Ford Pinto that was frequently the butt of jokes because of an unfortunate exploding gas tank issue. I had to do something to negate the embarrassment of driving one, so I had it commercially painted like a spotted pony (it never occurred to me to paint it myself, even though I was in art school). The dealership assumed I was kidding, wanting a $1,200 paint job on a $500 car, but they gave me a half-price discount. When I picked it up they had marked WHOA on the brake, GIDDY-UP on the gas pedal, and the gears were labelled STABLE for park, TROT for first and GALLOP for second. I drove it for ten years. In the interim someone gifted me Harrod Blank’s art-car book and the rest is history. I attended my first art car show in Portland in the early Nineties and found my tribe.

Next came the “Zoobaru”, a Subaru station wagon that my former boyfriend and I painted like a snow leopard and named Leopard Bernstein. I began adding 3D critters inside and out — plastic lions, tigers, cheetahs and leopards — until there were about 700 of them. Ears were welded on and a friend gave me a fabric tail — cartists (art car artists) bring each other care packages of whatever it is we collect.

You can’t be in a bad mood — or rather, stay in a bad mood — driving an art car. When a housemate borrowed my car, she mused: “I always forget about allowing that extra 20 minutes to answer questions.”

Plaidmobile by Tim McNally

From the Art Cars series — one man's obsession with America's mobile masterpieces

Photographs by Harrod Blank

NEW YORK — I wanted to see if I painted my car plaid — it needed a lick of paint anyway — if I could get it registered under that colour. It was really just a joke. It took three years of sending paperwork to the Department of Motor Vehicles, but eventually the change was made from “red” to “plaid” on my registration. 

I’m 55 and work as a property caretaker and volunteer at a local animal shelter. I started on the Plaidmobile in 1995 and drove it for ten years. It’s been all over the US and to Canada at festivals, parades and shows. 

Now I have a new art car called the Cosmic Shark. It’s the anti-plaid car with a free-flowing, non-rigid design. When people ask me what it’s about, I say it’s about having fun.