Collective puts pedal to the metal with art cars
Inspired by Burning Man event, group builds functioning dragon
There is a workshop in this city where a ragtag collective of creative Toronto folks are working in the belly of giant metal beasts.
Near Dupont and Ossington, it is known as The 4tress, and this is the hub of Toronto’s mutant vehicle movement.
Four of the vehicles, also known as art cars, are in various states of construction, with metal frames and innards being worked on by a volunteer army of artists, designers and other handy people who spend their days in the ad industry or working on sets for TV and film production and other trades.
Heavy Metais a fire-breathing dragon that is fully functioning and has already made over a dozen trips to Burning Man and other regional events. It will be on display during Pride at the stage at 526 Church St. from 5 p.m. today.
Also in development are the boat-inspired Ark Car, the all-female-led Tarna the Jackalope, and another that the team hopes to keep under wraps and make a splash with upon completion.
The group is inspired by Burning Man, where art cars and other contraptions are part of that desert-based festival’s counter-culture movement.
The ringleaders of this local movement — which literally declares itself a travelling circus when it crosses the border — are Kevin Bracken and Marie Poliak, a husband-and-wife team who have designed several of these machines.
Bracken is one of the founders of Newmindspace, the crew that gained prominence for running events like the Pillow Fights and Lightsaber battles in this city’s public squares.
“A big part of what we’ve done is because of Burning Man. We started dating there and it’s been a large part of our lives. This year will be my 13th year. Every year that I’ve gone, I’d said Toronto could use more of this,” says Bracken, 31.
“Over the years, my real goal is to make Toronto more like an acid trip, to make it more like this big collective hallucination that we create together.”
Bracken and Poliak took their first vehicle, The Prodigal Swan, to Burning Man, but decided that it was too small, as it only held six people.
The Swan is now permanently installed on Fremont St. in Las Vegas.
With larger ambitions, they set out to create Heavy Meta, a dragon built on a GMC school bus base that can hold over 20 people — and shoot fire out of its mouth and tail.
Stacy Campbell is the fire lead on Heavy Meta, when she’s not busy working on special effects
“My real goal is to make Toronto more like an acid trip.”
KEVIN BRACKEN
on sets around town including The Boys, The Expanse, Umbrella Academyand American Gods.
She got involved because the team was lacking people who had fire experience, and it gave her the opportunity to build her own system.
“I’ve been interested in getting involved with more art projects outside of the film industry. A lot of what we do in film is operate other machinery, but you don’t get to actually make (the fire rig),” she said.
She now often travels with the dragon, and loves how people react to it.
“One of the best experiences I get out of it is seeing people’s reactions, which are usually either excitement or tears,” says Campbell, recalling a Maker Fair in New York.
“There was a dad with his child in his stroller, who was watching our dragon. He looked like he was going to take pictures, but then we did the fire and he literally turned around and ran away.”
Campbell warns there will not be fire at Pride, but plenty of smoke effects and bubbles to support the fun vibe.
Bracken and Campbell estimate that more than100 people — all of them volunteers — touched or helped build Heavy Meta. Jordan St. Clair Snyder is an art director at a design firm, who answered one of the open calls and it lit a fire within her.
“It was such a great experience working with them on that, and building something,” Snyder says. “And when we were finished Heavy Meta, I was really upset that was it, after going to the shop and working on it every day, so I kind of went, well, I want to build another one.” Now she, Emma Duggan and Andrea Kong are the leads on Tarna the Jackalope, the next mutant vehicle slowly taking shape. Planned to have fire in its antlers and heart, the team plan to buy the GMC bus base for it this July.
All of the money for the art cars came either from crowdfunding or parties; capitalizing on the Pride showcase, the crew held what they called an Eden party at Revival on Saturday night.
Bracken says anyone is welcome at their Mythbusters- style workshop, where you can learn welding or several other fabrication methods; more information can be found on Heavy Meta’s site, heavymeta.ca.
“You meet a lot of people, because these projects require so many people with so many diverse talents,” Snyder says.
“It attracts really interesting people who are curious about lots of things.”