When I was between jobs in June of 2005, Mike and I talked about turning his 1992 Buick into an art car. The paint job was faded off and it was screaming at me to turn it into an art car. In October 2005, as his birthday present, we spent 10 days making the Black Widow. Mike was inspired by all the talk of what the car could be, he took 4 months to decide on the design and this is the result. After the untimely death of his father, his own chronic injury from a major car accident, the tragic loss of his 25 year old brother in a motorcycle accident, a resulting bout with depression, and a divorce, that caused further depression, Mike had a lot to say with this car. The Black Widow represents death. You can run but you can't hide. Children loved this car. They saw it as a Spiderman car and would squeal at Mike everywhere he went. Neither of us snapped to the similarity in the colors of Spiderman and the Black Widow. Red was chosen because of the feelings the color red evolks. In contrast, when adults read the description card in the window, all their familiar thoughts of a comic strip character or motion picture disappeared. A former co-worker actually told me that Mike should think about changing the car's biography because "it's a bit depressing". Ok, sure. Just change Mike's history and he'll do that. As a matter of fact, this car wouldn't even have existed if Mike's life had been different. The car was a statement, and it was cathartic for Mike spending the months he took to conceptualize it. This car lived for a little over a year. When a couple of windows stopped rolling up and down and the a/c went out, it was time for her to go away. Mike donated this car to Rebecca Bass, a Waltrip High School art teacher and good friend of mine. She and her class turned it into Fandango (ZZ Top) for the 2007 Houston Art Car Parade. They got one of four 2nd place awards for Best Art Car. Before it was donated to her, we took the hood off. It is in the backyard with the driver's door from The Cat's Meow - kind of a little graveyard and memorial to my art cars.
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