Missile Dick Chicks go to Houston

What kind of art car does one make during such a political year? With all this “Bomb Iran!” drivel in the air, we couldn’t resist a contemporary twist on the Doctor Strangelove theme. Our favorite political street theater troupe, The Missile Dick Chicks, needed an art car for their 2008 World Domination Tour. So we built it and hit the road for what was to be an insane 4000-mile maiden voyage from San Francisco to Houston and back. Trying to write about it now, we are stymied by the sheer shock and horror of it all. But give us time. With the Democratic and Republican conventions still ahead, the adventure has just begun.

Cheerio is Born!

It has been a long time coming, but Sue Shefman’s red RAV4 has received a makeover by Haideen Anderson and myself, and we just gave a great ride to San Francisco Chronicle features writer Meredith May. And she was kind enough to write about the experience in an article titled, His cars often take turn towards whimsy. Thanks Meredith for such a fine article. Now we load Cheerio and her roof riding companions Shalom and Aloha onto a transport truck bound for Houston.

The world needs another Hippo Car!

There is a woman in Texas named Sue Shefman who is crazy about hippos. Back in 2000, at the turn of the last century, Sue found me and commissioned me to transform her two year old RAV4 into the purple hippo car named Harmony, that has had a great life transporting Sue, often dressed as a clown. The gig helped me to gain the resources to move west at the beginning of 2001.

About eight years later, Sue contacted me and asked me to build her a second hippo car. She liked her first one so much, that she pretty much wanted another one much like Harmony, but this one would be red and named Cheerio. Normally, I am not interested in doing the same thing twice, but this was a beloved repeat customer and it would be my first art car created onto a brand new car. I am happy to say that Cheerio the hippopotamobile is almost finished. Haideen Anderson fully collaborated on this one and it is turning out extra special because of her contributions. I hope Sue has this car for a long time, and will be sharing images of the finished product soon. In the meantime, here are a few process pics!

The new hippo car will have two baby ‘roof rider’ hippos, one named Shalom and one named Aloha. We are almost ready to paint everything and are finishing up the mechanics of the two winking eyes.

WELCOME. . . .

You wanna know what’s new? This website, www.tomkennedyart.com, the much awaited

scrapbook of my projects and adventures. A special thanks to talented artist and friend

Joe Mangrum (www.joemangrum.com) for his initial help, and a very extra special thanks

to Kevin Mathieu (www.infoflow.com) for stepping up to the plate and whaling this website

into existence….

The exercise of ‘hanging out the virtual shingle’ is by design an analysis of past work, at least,

that which one posesses documentation for. Who has influenced us, and who do we link with

in a very real effort to be a part of the virtual world? What is worth looking at and what is worth

sharing? Hopefully some kind of vibration becomes evident when considering all projects over

time. The juggling act continues.

I am slowly learning how to juggle a mix of the projects that find me and the projects that I

develop and pursue. Right now I feel blessed to be alive, living with and married to love

Haideen Anderson and some amazing housemates here in San Francisco; we sometimes

call ourselves the Famous Grouse Collective. It is both unlikely and at the same time

perfectly fitting that the Dinosaur Demolition Games would be invented here. The Friend Patrol

is about to be born. What kind of unlikely visionary projects are you working on? -

– Tom Kennedy 2-4-08