One of the recurring themes of the Art Car movement is the painstaking artistic process involved and the amount of time people will devote to creating their perfect Art Car. Once created, they will also devote an inordinate amount of time and work to its upkeep and will take it to parades, shows and festivals year in and year out. For an example of this unswerving devotion to the medium of Art Cars, it is worth looking at Oakland car artist Ron Dolce’s work, the Glass Quilt. As good an example as you will ever see of the mosaic technique of making Art Cars, it took Ron an amazing eighteen years to finish, gluing tiny pieces of colored glass to the body of a Volkswagen Beetle.

During the time he was creating the Glass Quilt, Ron Dolce continued to drive the car and whenever he got a dent in the front of the car he simply re-applied the pattern, disguising the dent perfectly. The result is almost surreal, seen from afar or up close, although Ron does advise that to truly connect with the artwork you must actually place your hands on it. This makes a great deal of sense, as the nature of the work is three-dimensional as opposed to the cars that have simply been painted on.

It is a classic of the genre – mosaic glass glued onto a classic Volkswagen Beetle over the course of fully eighteen years. What could be more purely Art Car than that?