Brad Carlile Photo Blog

Winning… What a ride! Grand opening at the DeSoto building

Jul 23rd, 2007

At Tom Cramer‘s impressive 2005 show at the Mark Woolley Gallery, I really wanted to buy but almost completely sold out. ok…fast forward.

As part of the DeSoto building opening, Portland’s Museum of Contemporary Craft raffled off a ’77 BMW 320i art car painted on-site by Tom Cramer. How cool is that.

After looking several of the galleries again, I went back to the car.

Taking the above photo, I had a feeling it could actually be my car. Guess what? I won the raffle! AWESOME!!! When I mentioned this shot to my dad he advised I should obscure the plate. …though it is going to be pretty easy to spot around town. The colors of the car are wonderful. For those who have looked at my art, you can tell I like more subtle colors 🙂

Tom Cramer’s next show is at Laura Russo October 4-27 2007. I’m certainly driving there in my new ride. More on Tom Cramer at Laura Russo at the PORT blog.

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Art Car Day 1 – THANKS Tom Cramer & Museum of Contemporary Craft 28th, 2007 27th of July was day one of possession. I cruised around for an hour. The car created lots of smiles from all kinds of people on the street! Thanks Tom, awesome painting!

I also want to thank Portland’s Museum of Contemporary Craft for setting this up and raffling it off. A few more images
…and one more…

For the story on the raffle, and more info on Tom and MCC, see:
https://www.bradcarlile.com/blog/?p=94

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Art car history, a fun twist? Aug 13th, 2007 Having just dropped a few bucks for a few art car repairs (no regrets!), I decided to flip through various service documents to get a feel for what upcoming service may be required.It seems beyond, of course, Portland artist Tom Cramer painting the car, the car may have crossed the path of another Portland artist. One of the service documents was a 2004 “consumer pre-purchase inspection” with the name “Anna Fidler” on it, could it be the same Anna Fidler who has had several shows at Pulliam Deffenbaugh? This would have been one year before she received her MFA from Portland State.I wrote about Anna’s recent opening in my June 1st thur posting:

(excerpt)
Anna Fidler’s show rocked. They didn’t want me taking images so I’ll just point to “Theory of Levitation” which I really enjoyed and suggest you just go and stand in front of for a while.

It looks like the she didn’t buy the car as the owners at that time latter did the repairs that were indicated on the pre-purchase inspection form.

I later exchanged emails with Anna and found it was indeed her, but it was a light mint green at the time. This is a very fun little twist of art car history!

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Joining a tradition of BMW art cars Sep 20th, 2007 After getting my art car I’ve been hearing more and more about the art cars. I found this bit about the making of the 1997 Andy Warhol BMW art car. It also has footage from the 1979 24 hours of Le Mans where it came in 6th. “I tried to portray speed pictorially. If a car is moving really quickly, all the lines and colors are blurred,” Andy Warhol.And if you want to see an even slicker madison-avenue BMW ad on BMW art cars:

It gives glimpses of these works:
Alexander Calder
Frank Stella
Roy Lichtenstein
Andy Warhol
Ernest Fuchs
Robert Rauschenberg
Ken Done
Michael Jagamara Nelson
Matazo Kayama
Cesar Manrique
Esther Mahlangu
A.R. Penck
Sandro Chia
David Hockney
Jenny Holzer

More at: http://www.bmwworld.com/artcars

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Tom Cramer at Laura Russo Gallery & a special Karmann Ghia Oct 1st, 2007 First of all, in October, Tom Cramer is having a solo show at the Laura Russo Gallery (805 NW 21st, Portland, OR). The opening reception is this 1st Thursday 4-Oct from 5-8p. He has been doing some very interesting new work. I’m really looking forward to the show and the opening should be fun.Art Car corner 🙂

Some of you may have seen the Karmann Ghia in the photograph on the left around town (I haven’t seen it yet, but two of my friends have, including the photo on the left that is courtesy of LaValle Linn (copyright 2007). This is Tom’s brand new paint for his ’65 Karmann Ghia.
If you’ve seen a BMW painted in a similar manner that was also the work of Tom Cramer, but I own the keys to that 320i art car. If you’ve been following this blog you know that I won it as part of the Portland’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts opening their new place.

Last month, I exchanged emails with Tom Cramer about how to take care of my art car. He told me what kind of paint he used and that was all I needed to figure things out. I told him what a joy it was to drive around in the car and he said mentioned he missed driving art cars, I guess he got busy. Fantastic!

There is also a image of Tom in the process of painting my BMW 320i art car in the September ’07 issue of the Portland Monthly (Vol 5, issue 9, page 48).

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Olafur Eliasson’s 2007 BMW Art Car Dec 4th, 2007

Olafur Eliasson, was chosen to design the sixteenth BMW Art Car. Alexander Calder was commissioned to create the first one in 1975. You can see more about the previous cars in my posting: “My car joins a tradition of BMW art cars” Eliasson started with the BMW H2R, an environmentally-friendly liquid-hydrogen-powered vehicle, striped it shell and transformed it. But it needs a special chilled environment maintain its 2-ton ice covering. At SFMOMA can see Olafur Eliasson’s art car in a installation called “Your Tempo” (exhibit details) as well as his first American mid-career retrospective with works from the last 15 years called “Take Your Time” (exhibit details). At SFMOMA see “Your Tempo” until 13-Jan and “Take Your Time” until 24-Feb-08.

There is also a PORT review of the works.

Olafur Eliasson was selected by an international board of curators which met in April 2005 to discuss the future of the BMW Art Car Collection. The board consisted of: Bruce W. Ferguson, Dean of the Columbia University in New York, Pi Li from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Peking, Suzanne Page, Director of the Musea da Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Larry Rinder, Dean of the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, Donna de Salvo, Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Prof. Dr. Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, Director of the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

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Art Car Seen from Outer SPACE!?! Aug 2nd, 2008

My art car has been spotted from outer space! It now joins the great wall of china as something that can be seen in outer space 🙂

I was showing a friend my new GPS-enabled phone and zooming in to a parking lot where I sometimes park, low and behold there was the art car from over a year ago captured by satellite imagery on google maps!

OK, honestly I know that these maps are a mix of satellite & plane images, but I’d like to think that this one was shot from outer space.

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