PESTILENCIA, by Cheri "Rat Grrrl" Brugman
Winner of the
prestigious prize for Most Daring Concept at the '99 Seattle Art Car Blow-Out was this menacing, mutant Subaru
hatchback. The car's creator, Cheri "Rat Girl" Brugman (a tattooed heartbreaker
in crimson hair and black fishnet stockings), drove up from Portland to be with kindred
spirits at the Pacific Northwest's premier Art Car event, the Seattle
Art Car Blow-Out.
This Gothic vehicle (which sadly is no more) featured guns, dismenbered
mannequin limbs dripping blood-red paint, plastic rats, antlers on front bumper and roof,
and provocative paint pen drawings inside explosive bursts. Pestilencia
challenged the viewer with overt S&M--with a gory decapitated head on the driver's
side door, sticks of dynamite, baby dolls impaled on antlers, and pipes on either side of
the hood which could puff smoke in daytime parades or shoot tall jets of flame in
nighttime pyrotechnic displays. A crowning touch was life-size skulls placed on top of
both rear-view mirrors, copiously oozing blood-red tissue around and underneath the mirror
frames. The effect is seen below in the 1999 Art Car Encampment in San Jose, with Harrod
Blank's immortal beetle, OMYGAWD, on the right (and Dr. Schlock's
flipped wig sitting on top of the world).
The roof (shown in closeup in the thumbnail) featured flying saucers with plastic spacemen and dinosaur figures underneath. The car was particularly haunting at night, when the UFOs and the caged dog on the roof were illuminated from within by colored lights. Cheri was bummed by the loss of her art car--and so were we--but we all got over it at Art Car Fest 2000, when Cheri personally demolished the vehicle in a ceremony held at Ace Auto Wrecking in San Francisco.
Pestilencia stood as a masterpiece of the macabre--and it was a million laughs.