It's a lively afternoon--I'm hearing a slightly aggro Bible enthusiast yell to Saturday strollers down State Street, occasionally inciting some fervid responses, and meanwhile a blues harmonica seems to be blaring from someone's parked car. Crowds keep forming around Harrod Blank's art car. It's parked out in front of Work Gallery along with some other installations special for the fest.
At 2:30 today Blank rolled up in this tree mobile, making a grand presentation to the crowd ready for his arrival at the Michigan Theater. The roots caught on the passenger door as it was opened, causing a little challenge to its functionality. Blank crawled out to cheering, and headed in to see Automorphosis, his documentary about art cars.
Automorphosis was way fun, dudes. On the most basic level, who cannot help but find joy in seeing cars shaped like a shark, a telephone, or a friggin' stiletto heel? Blank's characters revealed to us not just their kookiness or the intensity of their obsession, but all of the many reasons humans make and enjoy art. Some art cars were created out of a cathartic need to deal with emotional or physical challenges; others created for pure vanity and attention; and others made simply for fun. Art is also made to communicate a message of course, and one woman made art cars that addressed littering (crap all over it) and cigarette smoking (more aesthetically pleasing but disgusting car with neatly lined up cigarette butts arranged with pirate-style crossbones). One man spent 18 years meticulously crafting a VW with stained glass--he did it out of pure joy of working with tactile art. My favorite is a tie between the car covered with dancing plastic lobsters and Billy Big Mouth Basses singing along to the "Hallelujah Chorus" and the cheeseburger motorcycle, complete with a milkshake odometer. 
For this year’s theme of “New World of Independent Cinema” two local artists led walking tour exploring a hidden history of Ann Arbor through the concept of “patina,” the beautiful residue of time left on architectural surfaces. A substantial and varied group of 37 came this morning (I stumbled down there just in time for the 11am start). Our patinologists Timothy and Andrea took us down Tripper’s Alley, the graffitied walkway you pass through if you go out the back exit to the Michigan Theater.
They noted this spot as maybe the most photographed place in A2 and went through a little history. Graffiti supposedly started in the 1980s and then a big mural covered everything in 1991 (read side note about this below if you’re curious). Slowly new paint strokes, sprayed tags, and stencil art covered up the mural. Andrea gave us interesting scientific background on gum as we marveled at the dotted colors of the gum wall, and Tim told us all about “Killroy was here.” Tim and Andrea did an excellent job at engaging a large group and inspiring them to notice beautiful details of the cityscape that to some passersby may seem like annoying signs of neglect or decay. Tim pointed out his appreciation for spots where the city attempted to cover up graffiti but never get the color of the paint quite right, leaving a “cubist style” patina behind. I also appreciated Andrea's disclaimer for their stretch to connect patinas with chocolate at the end of the tour, since we ended with a free sample at Schakolad. A visitor asked them their names and Tim responded that their names were, "Pat Patina and Tina Patina"--good one. Anyway, the chocolate conclusion was some sort of a chemical connection that I couldn’t quite grasp, especially since chocolate in my belly was all I could quite think of at that point in the morning on an empty stomach.
Side note about Tripper’s Alley: The mural, much to the dismay of local artists and graffiti aficionados, covered the creations of hundreds of people in order to display a sort of paint-by-numbers style mural by one artist who wasn’t even an Ann Arbor resident. I've got inside info on the two people who were the first to deface the mural one very cold February night. They grabbed a can of white paint, which they had planned to splash against the walls of the mural, but since it had unexpectedly frozen they ended up smearing gobs of it over an image of a newscaster on a TV and some other random places on the massive mural. They broke the seal so that soon after local artists began covering it again.
The afterparty at the Yellow Barn involved video projections, crazy art hanging everywhere, dancing, darkness, a packed porch, every kind of person everywhere, filmmakers getting down, and honestly I was too busy talking and getting in some social time after all the films and blogging that I didn't get too many pictures...
Come out tonight to the Cavern Club with DJ Bob Mair (10:30pm) and then the UM Museum of Art's Music Video Showcase at Midnight!