Goodbye Eartha Karr
My 1978 Mercedes 300CD running on Bio diesel, left for an art compand in Arizona in October 2019. It was a nice run and I loved driving her. However, she was slow and no match for the increasing tourist traffic of the North coast, so I lent her out to friends and the mice. The mice were winning, and then Greg offered to restore her to her former mechanical glory. She left and now she lives in Sedona, attending crystal workshops and Bell Mountain sound healings. She is so happy.
Here is what I wrote about her when I first created her:
I am an artist, a poet, a performance artist and a teacher who cares about long term planetary accounting. Eartha Karr reflects my multi-faceted philosophy and life long obsession with creative, healthy living.
Eartha Karr is a 1978 Mercedes Benz 300CD. She has been converted to run on Bio-Diesel, a non-toxic, biodegradable, carbon neutral fuel made from recycled vegetable oil. Blake purchased Eartha in June of 2003, then merely a brown car with a clean body of potential and, after test driving her for a few months, transformed her in August 2003, though she began running Eartha on biodiesel from her very first first fill up.
As the creator of another artcar, a fume coughing 1969 Volkswagen Ghia named “Zezzie the Girl”, I wanted Eartha to be more than a beautiful car, she had to be sustainable as well: a car that was good for the eyes, the soul and the planet. Like most artcar artists, my approach to creating Eartha Karr was obsessive. I worked 3 1/2 weeks, logging 18-hour days to complete her vision for the outer paint job. The inside of the car took about a week of sewing, brown paper bagging, painting, stapling, gluing, and cutting. Then another five days to complete her bumper mosaic (from objects collected on beaches and nature spots all around the planet, plus a smattering of items gifted from others).
All of Eartha’s poems were written (and are often performed) by me, and the designs reflect my personal quest and path, with symbols expressing my years in Japan, my deep respect for the life (the serpent) in all its forms, the trees, the flying, crawling, swimming creatures, the healing transformation that comes to all of us when we embrace change.
