#5. bien5, my second car, a 1990 Toyota Corolla









































April 2007

I drove this poor thing naked for two months (er ... the car, not me). I just couldn't imagine how to paint on red. On the other hand, after so many years of driving an art car, I just hated not driving one, so I picked up my sponges and cracked open a can of 1-SHOT.

I'd been doing research for a belly dancer who later changed her mind. Still, that's how I got the paisleys on the driver side. I'm a major fan of spirals. In fact, if I'd done the passenger side first, the whole car would have had that design.

I'm still not happy with the roof or the hood, but my own car is usually a work in progress ... The tailgate was an African village but it was awful, and there's no way to take the paint off. I painted Grandma's Quilt on top of the village, though, so everything turned out okay.

I only named this car bien5 because art car show people really want names. I don't like to name things, especially inanimate things. But this worked out, since bien50 combines the phonetic spelling of my initials (bn) and my birth year -- and this was the fifth car I painted. I just call it "my car." I absolutely love it that bien is so good in Spanish and French.

Lee Miller took that great photo of my car and me up at the top.
Yay, Lee!

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