| Matthew Donahue, as MAD 45, with his Pollocktik car. (Photo courtesy of Matthew Donahue) |
Matt Donahue took last summer’s Cash for Clunkers program personally.
"I was pretty upset over it to be honest," Donahue said in a recent e-mail.
And it wasn’t just that the clunker he was hoping to trade in didn’t qualify for the federal program
intended to stimulate the economy and get gas guzzler off the road.
Donahue is a visual artist who creates art cars. He’ll take what others may consider to be a clunker and
turn them into rolling collages, some whimsical, some provocative. So When he saw all those cars heading
to the crusher as potential material for art. "It did hurt to see all those clunkers
destroyed."
While many art car enthusiasts may create one car, Donahue is a serial creator. He’s made 15 starting in
1996 with a pickup truck called the Map Mobile, which he and Toledo artist Mark Moffett festooned with
topographical maps discarded from the map library at Bowling Green State University’s Jerome Library.
Donahue worked in the Sound Recording Archives in Jerome for eight years while a graduate student, and
the library’s waste also provided material for cars decorated with records and others covered with car
magazine covers.
Most of those cars are included in his new book of postcards "Taking It To the Streets: An Art Car
Experience." The book, which includes 25 postcards, was inspired by books Donahue would see in
museum gift shops as well as the postcards art car enthusiasts often print up to celebrate their
creations.
The book is available at Grounds for Thought, 174 S. Main St., Bowling Green, and at the Toledo Museum of
Art as well as from Amazon.com.
Not all his cars are represented in the book – the Car Power auto was completed after presstime, said
Donahue, who is an instructor in popular culture at BGSU.
Still they show the range of his work. There’s the recent Jackson Pollocktik car, including one with
"Poverty Is Not a Crime" painted on its trunk.
The car has played into one of Donahue’s other obsessions the rock act MAD 45.
The last MAD 45 album featured the artist’s reflections on the state of politics leading up to last
year’s election, and he used the car both to prompt viewers to think about patriotism and to promote the
new CD.
Then there’s the Breakfast Special with its smiley face of eggs and bacon.
Donahue also includes a couple examples of cars made in collaboration with children. Those students have
included kids with special needs in Scotland as well as children as close as Toledo and as far as
Singapore.
The idea is in this digital age to take art to the streets. That idea is taken a step further with the
postcards that can travel snail-mail style.
The cars, he said, are drivable, and drive them he does to exhibits in Maryland, Seattle and Texas. Every
year he travels to Houston for the largest art car rally in the country.
"When one dies then it is time for another," Donahue said, though the choices may be fewer
thanks to Cash for Clunkers.
