Automorphosis / In Hawaii, racer boyz grew up adding giant spoilers to their Nissans in the hopes that by making their rides look like large shopping carts they would be adequately expressing their individuality. As a teen growing up on a hippie commune in the Santa Cruz Mountains, filmmaker Harrod Blank did something a bit different to his own car.

“I grew up from the age of 7 to 17 without a TV set,” Blank says. “As a result, I wasn’t up on popular culture… And I also was kind of an outcast in high school. I was definitely different from other people because I had different values. When I got my first car–it was a 1965 VW bug–I didn’t feel it represented me at all. I thought, ‘What the hell, I’ll just start changing it.’ That impetus, the wanting to express my individuality and rebelling against the system and rebelling against the automobile–those reasons are really the backbone of the entire art-car phenomenon.”

His film Automorphosis is a love letter to the drivers and artists who feel compelled to customize their cars in the oddest ways. We meet a goth who has turned a hearse into a black gargoyle-ed “Carthedral.” A rebel “grrl” affixes plastic dismembered limbs to her car, which even spews jets of fire. Another enthusiast pasted pennies all over his van.

The common thread for these eccentrics seems to be that they are exhibitionists who love attention. One even says, “When I go to Hawaii, I wear a bikini this big and I walk right down Kalakaua.”

Lucky us. While that may be grounds for a ticket, the art cars themselves aren’t moving violations.

“Part of the definition of an art car is that it’s street legal, licensed and registered,” Blank says. “That’s the tricky part, abiding by the rules of being licensed. You have to have all your lights working, spaced properly… The car can’t be wider than eight feet. You have to have a windshield. You have to have a rear view mirror, but as long as you abide by those rules, you can do anything.”

One of Blank’s own vehicles is the “Oh My God!” car; the phrase is painted on the body in various languages. Famous island artists Masami Teraoka and Lynda Hess posed with the vehicle in the above picture and the two are close friends of Harrod’s father, Les Blank, the acclaimed documentary filmmaker.

“I wanna try and visit Masami Teraoka and see his studio cause he’s a family friend,” Harrod Blank says. “He’s a really neat guy. I haven’t seen him in awhile and I heard from my father he lived in a really great area near a great beach.”

Ironically, during his stay here, Blank will be traveling the island in a generic rental car.

Up next for Blank is a documentary on Burning Man. He has attended the past 17 iterations. In fact, he was driving back to civilization from middle of the Nevada desert when the Weekly called him for this interview. He was kind enough to pull over and answer our questions.

“At Burning Man this year, I didn’t shoot film. I couldn’t afford it so I started shooting HD on a P2 Panasonic camera that shoots on cards and you download the material to a hard drive. I don’t have to buy or process film, which is very expensive.”

Costs like those are always a factor for the life of a struggling artist, especially a filmmaker like Blank who deals with such a niche art scene.

“I basically have taken every penny I’ve ever made doing the things I do to make money [and put it] back into the art. It’s a big cycle. What it means is that I’m perpetually in debt, but if I can just keep being creative then I’m fulfilled. If I had to get a full-time job, and it would take me away from being creative, then I wouldn’t be as happy. I’m really lucky to be able to just scrape by. The art-car museum is nonprofit so people can donate. We’ve raised some money that way.”

The museum Blank speaks of is Art Car World in Douglas, Ariz.. Open by appointment, it houses and preserves many of the vehicles Blank loves so much, as well as three of his own.

“We’re all getting older and a lot of these cars end up getting destroyed. They get taken to the crusher.”

In Blank’s world, creative expression can end up not in an attic or in a box under a bed, but being smashed and destroyed in a junkyard. That’s a risk not many artists run.

[Note: Blank is also looking for an art-car owner from Hawaii. Sometime in the ’90s, a man in this state had a car with red Monopoly hotels all over it. Sir, if this is you, step out of the vehicle and get in touch with Blank at the event.]

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