My Art Car: The Snailoon!

Is this art? I thought I would post about my Art Car for the art crawl! IMGUR, meet The Snailoon, It's an old west saloon on the back of a giant snail. I built this thing for Burning Man a few years ago. It was greuling, but SO much fun. I hope I get the
chance to build another art car some day.

Also, just wanted to shout out my camp, The Bureau of Misinformation. Everyone donated money and a few very talented folks donated their time and skills. Couldn't do it without them!

It all started with this flat bed truck. I had a friend weld that frame.

Then I framed it out with 2x3s for studs

I wanted it to look rustic and worn, so I used a bunch of different stains. the "shell" of the saloon part was built out of cedar fence boards

this part came together pretty quick and the progress felt good.

I was building this thing in my driveway in LA - my neighbors definitely thought I was nuts.

I built a bar to go inside

A very important piece - it's fake, fyi :)

found the PERFECT old couch on craigslist for like $100

Saloon doors!

Ok, i was running out of time, and I had a saloon, but no snail. So I kinda threw this together. It worked.

and the snail tail.

I had this sign cut on a cnc, and put corrogated plastic behind it, then LEDs inside a box, so it would light up at night. it turned out better than expected :)

Believe it or not, this thing is street legal. We drove it all over like this. It's bout 13 feet tall. This was a gas station stop on the way up to Burning Man. It's kinda a death trap. turn signals broke, window doesn't go up all the way, no AC... I could go on.

Fully assembled at Burning Man! As you can see, the snail part needed a little more work - we'll get to that.

Night shot. Has to be "radically illuminated" at Burning Man in order to get a permit to drive around at night. Yeah, there are actually lots of rules at Burning Man.

It's like this a lot out there. Dust storms are my favorite.

After a tough week of partying in the desert, we all feel like this thing looks.

Okay - time for Snailoon 2.0! We decided to build the snail parts out of metal the next year. A friend taught me how to weld in like 10 minutes and we were off! I did burn the shit outta my arm and still have a scar. Safety 3rd!

My buddy had the idea that the tail should be the entrance. Smart So we welded it up and it's on huge hinges so it just folds up for transport.

basically build a cage around the truck and then covered it with a metal mesh.

snailing.

snailed.

we sprayed it with a chemicals that made it look rusty and gave it this nice patina. Also, probably unnecessarily, hit it with a blowtorch. whish was awesome.

My wife welding the railings for the rooftop. She's a badass.

Here's what it looked like in the desert we were pretty proud of this ridiculous beast.

This is the inside. we kept it stocked with whisky and lemonade and drove around looking for weirdos.

view from the tail

always a party on the snailoon

Oh yeah, I got married there that year! That's my wife and I on the left. Good friends on the right, and in the middle is our robot Maxine (that's another post :))

Oh yeah, and if you notied all those propane tanks? Snailoon 2.0 also shoots fire :)