Art. Life. Repeat.: Handria, Then and Now

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Handria, Then and Now

Art Car--what a thing to do to a Porsche! (Wikipedia)

I can't honestly say I've ever had or ever wanted an art car. I've had bangers, that's for sure. And some really swell cars, like the huge silver Mercedes I leased to get me through the social/business barrier in Palm Beach County when I lived there. "You are what you drive" is the local motto. If you want to do good business, you'll shell out for a swell car.

So I did. Truth be told, I loved that car. But it was the 1980s, and repairs on it came in only three prices: $300, $500 and $700. The first was for windshield wiper blade replacements.

Anyway, years went by and I ended up in Baltimore. I was writing books and needed some information about the Irish Potato Famine, otherwise known--in my house anyway--as the British Genocide Exercise in Ireland. Online, I found a man named Conrad Bladey, owner of Hutman Productions, publisher of books and other fancy stuff.

If there is anything about the Genocide he doesn't know, it probably is hidden somewhere deep in the British annals of their perfidy at some swell university or other.

Anyway, Conrad and I got along famously during our phone discussions; he had kindly offered to let me pick his prodigious brain extensively for my book. After I finished the book, I invited him and his wife to dinner. I also invited my friend Noeleen, a bona fide Irishwoman from Swords, the place outside Dublin where Brian Boru is said to have died.

Excuse me, please, but I must do a bit of scene setting now. Noeleen has a wicked sense of humor; of course she does, she's Irish. We were once waiting for our table at the Baltimore Museum of Art's restaurant when a lady came in for drinks for a party on the terrace. It was a wedding shower, and all the attendees were wearing funny hats and had things attached to their clothing with clothes pins, or pegs as they say in the UK. The lady who came in for the drinks had a TON of clothespins on her. Noeleen said, "They must have hung her out to dry." Yeah. So you see....

Anyway, I guess I knew, when Conrad and I were nattering about the Famine, that Conrad also created art cars, but having never really seen one--as far as I could recall--it didn't scare me.

It should have.

More scene-setting. I lived in a large apartment complex on the edge of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. While most of the buildings fronted on Western Run, a small stream flowing through the north side of Baltimore, my building was the only one that fronted on a street of single-family homes, virtually all of them lived in by lovely, quiet, respectful Orthodox Jewish families with tons of kids.

It was a Friday night that we were having dinner with the Bladeys. Had I remembered what Friday meant in my neighborhood, I'd have planned it for ANY OTHER night. Not that the families walking by to shul--synagogue--for Friday services were a problem.

Conrad's CAR was the problem.

Noeleen and I were looking out my huge front windows (damn, I LOVED that apartment) across my big front balcony (seated 8 for dinner comfortably) and remarked on the wonderful behavior of all the children going by, and how quiet they were.

And then the Bladeys arrived, in an art car called Handria. Why that name? Because it had plastic mannequin hands stuck all over it. And hanging out the rear driver's side window was not only a hand, but a whole forearm, poised there forever. Obviously, the car was only useful in the summer.

Attached to the forearm was an upper arm, a neck, a head and, descending, a pair of huge naked boobs.

Holy shit! Noeleen and I were dying, really, part laughter, part horror. All those nice, conservative Orthodox families, and I had to prove that I was one of the great unwashed! It was embarrassing.

But the dinner went off well. Conrad Bladey is a great raconteur, for one thing. And after a few snorts...well...you get the picture.

Still, if I ever meet art car artists again, I'm going to request photos before I invite them to dinner, unless they promise to take the bus.

On a calmer note, Handria was simply the nascent form of a "handy" car Bladey worked on for years, until it finally won the big prize in Baltimore for art cars. Here is its final incarnation, known as The Epicentral Temple of the Helping Hand.