Dragonfly Bus
There was a slight fog hanging low over the Espanola, NM, Walmart parking lot and if you happened to look over as you passed by on Riverside Drive, you might have been convinced you were involved in some sort of time travel experiment.
A large vehicle with a bulge on top was sitting in the fog, smoke coming out of a smokestack on top. The whole bus, you realized it was a bus as you came closer, was covered — every square inch — in paintings of all sorts, like a giant mobile mural.
When I saw it and came closer, it reminded me of John Lea's painted truck, which I had also encountered in Espanola a few years earlier.
Now imagine traveling the country in a bus that has a Volkswagen van welded on top that functions something like a second floor or “penthouse." Imagine traveling the country with the idea of bringing art to everyone. That is what Heather Platen, her husband Leroy Herr, and their two young daughters are doing.
When I encountered it, and I assume when others encounter it, I am immediately drawn to the free spirit the bus and the family who reside inside, embody.
The lower half is a 1953 Chevrolet bus purchased in South Dakota. The 1969 VW van was purchased, and added to the top, in New Mexico. The travelers have also been to Vermont, Baltimore and New York City, just to name a few stops they’ve made on their journey — eventually ending up in Española. The bus has a very hippie, Merry Pranksters, Hog Farm, Wavy Gravy feel — or “vibe” if you will — to it.
For those unaware, the Merry Pranksters were cohorts and followers of American author Ken Kesey (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) in 1964. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey’s homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur or Further, organizing
parties and giving out LSD. During this time they met many of the guiding lights of the mid-1960s’ cultural movement and presaged what are commonly thought of as hippies with odd behavior, tie-dyed and red, white and blue clothing, and renunciation of normal society, which they dubbed The Establishment. Tom Wolfe documented their early travels in “The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”
“We’re a traveling art show and we travel from community to community telling people how important art is as a subject,” Herr said as he stood outside the bus. A number of people were stopping in the early morning, semi-foggy light to take photos.
“It’s the only subject that doesn’t have any rules and it’s the subject that is most overlooked. People will say, ‘Oh, it’s a pretty picture.’ But it’s like, ‘I can’t stop to smell the flowers because I’m too busy.’ To give somebody a blank piece of paper and ask them to draw you a picture, they might stumble, right on their face over that. Ask them to draw a horse or a house, they can do that, they have that solved. But that first blank piece of paper is the bare essence of original thought. Art is a very important subject for all the other subjects. If you don’t look at the box from a different perspective, you can’t make the box bigger.”
Platen went to the Art Institute of Chicago. She’s from Connecticut and Herr is from
South Dakota.
“We met in Washington state,” Leroy said. “She tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘I’m so sick and tired of watching you turn wrenches (Leroy is a mechanic), why don’t we focus on my art career?’”
That was the beginning of the Dragonfly Bus and it has turned into something more according to Herr.
“When we started to impact communities, and really see people’s minds open up, it was eye-opening,” Leroy explained. “Our American Dream has sort of turned into this momentary servitude. I don’t really agree because it’s like trading money for a person’s life. You trade an hour for ‘X’ amount of money and then you trade that for ‘X’ amount of someone else’s life. So I don’t think it’s a very humane currency.”
“We’re just trying to put more art into people’s hearts and minds around
the country,” Platen said.
The Dragonfly Bus received its unique name from a trucker in Nebraska, who observed the way the bus drags up hills and flies down them.
The bus’s name is hashtagged across social media platforms so people can track its travels and view the artwork.
“I want people to participate and feel ownership in art and the bus,” Platen said. “Having responsibility sounds like a bad thing, but having responsibility for a good thing is really great.”
“This bus is also a good starting point in discussions about sustainable living and decreasing your debt to allow you more time,” Herr said.”
But living on the bus — a home with no fixed address — creates some unique problems.
“I want to push some of our legal laws a little bit as far as this physical address thing,” Herr explained. “It’s too burdensome. They require me to present three forms of commerce to get a driver’s license. What about voting? Pistol permits? Stuff like that. People will say, ‘Oh, you can just use your mom’s address.’ But I don’t think that is where our legal mumbo jumbo should be. I should be very open and truthful with my answers, I live in a bus.
“I think the biggest argument is, ‘how do they find you?’ The digital world has really opened up this thing. The physical address really isn’t as important (as it used to be prior to the digital age). Essentially nobody uses snail mail. We’re moving on and change is hard, but the law needs to follow along. The government is supposed to be there to gives us these freedoms. This current political atmosphere is really interesting. Between build the wall and anti Muslim. This country is founded on opportunity, (on immigrants).”
Both Herr and Platen want to use art, and the bus, as a way to create a dialogue in a society that is moving more toward insults and arguments than civil conversations.
To that end, the artwork on the bus spans the spectrum from Neil deGrasse Tyson, Colin Kapernick, a police officer from Arkansas, Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.
“Hendrix and Morrison draw people in and then they ask, ‘Who is this guy,’ and they are introduced to an astrophysicist,” Herr said. “Tysen was painted in New York, right in Times Square.”
“You and I might think different things about a certain topic, but the fact
that we can talk about it, perhaps we can change things for the better,” Herr
said.
One time a fellow said to Herr, “We need to build that wall.” “And I asked him, ‘What kind of American are you? You must be at least 90 percent Native American,’” Herr said with a chuckle. “And it stopped him in his tracks. I think he had some sort of epiphany. It’s completely un-American to be anti-immigrant.”
Herr mentioned a study about prisoners who are incarcerated and the resulting brain damage that occurs because their days are all the same, because there is no stimulation.
“Their memories overlap,” Herr said. “It happens in today’s world with the nine to five, everything is the same. This (the bus) breaks that cycle. Just for a day I feel like I am making people live and think outside the box.”
Free spirits indeed.
A large vehicle with a bulge on top was sitting in the fog, smoke coming out of a smokestack on top. The whole bus, you realized it was a bus as you came closer, was covered — every square inch — in paintings of all sorts, like a giant mobile mural.
When I saw it and came closer, it reminded me of John Lea's painted truck, which I had also encountered in Espanola a few years earlier.
Now imagine traveling the country in a bus that has a Volkswagen van welded on top that functions something like a second floor or “penthouse." Imagine traveling the country with the idea of bringing art to everyone. That is what Heather Platen, her husband Leroy Herr, and their two young daughters are doing.
When I encountered it, and I assume when others encounter it, I am immediately drawn to the free spirit the bus and the family who reside inside, embody.
The lower half is a 1953 Chevrolet bus purchased in South Dakota. The 1969 VW van was purchased, and added to the top, in New Mexico. The travelers have also been to Vermont, Baltimore and New York City, just to name a few stops they’ve made on their journey — eventually ending up in Española. The bus has a very hippie, Merry Pranksters, Hog Farm, Wavy Gravy feel — or “vibe” if you will — to it.
For those unaware, the Merry Pranksters were cohorts and followers of American author Ken Kesey (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) in 1964. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey’s homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur or Further, organizing
parties and giving out LSD. During this time they met many of the guiding lights of the mid-1960s’ cultural movement and presaged what are commonly thought of as hippies with odd behavior, tie-dyed and red, white and blue clothing, and renunciation of normal society, which they dubbed The Establishment. Tom Wolfe documented their early travels in “The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”
“We’re a traveling art show and we travel from community to community telling people how important art is as a subject,” Herr said as he stood outside the bus. A number of people were stopping in the early morning, semi-foggy light to take photos.
“It’s the only subject that doesn’t have any rules and it’s the subject that is most overlooked. People will say, ‘Oh, it’s a pretty picture.’ But it’s like, ‘I can’t stop to smell the flowers because I’m too busy.’ To give somebody a blank piece of paper and ask them to draw you a picture, they might stumble, right on their face over that. Ask them to draw a horse or a house, they can do that, they have that solved. But that first blank piece of paper is the bare essence of original thought. Art is a very important subject for all the other subjects. If you don’t look at the box from a different perspective, you can’t make the box bigger.”
Platen went to the Art Institute of Chicago. She’s from Connecticut and Herr is from
South Dakota.
“We met in Washington state,” Leroy said. “She tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘I’m so sick and tired of watching you turn wrenches (Leroy is a mechanic), why don’t we focus on my art career?’”
That was the beginning of the Dragonfly Bus and it has turned into something more according to Herr.
“When we started to impact communities, and really see people’s minds open up, it was eye-opening,” Leroy explained. “Our American Dream has sort of turned into this momentary servitude. I don’t really agree because it’s like trading money for a person’s life. You trade an hour for ‘X’ amount of money and then you trade that for ‘X’ amount of someone else’s life. So I don’t think it’s a very humane currency.”
“We’re just trying to put more art into people’s hearts and minds around
the country,” Platen said.
The Dragonfly Bus received its unique name from a trucker in Nebraska, who observed the way the bus drags up hills and flies down them.
The bus’s name is hashtagged across social media platforms so people can track its travels and view the artwork.
“I want people to participate and feel ownership in art and the bus,” Platen said. “Having responsibility sounds like a bad thing, but having responsibility for a good thing is really great.”
“This bus is also a good starting point in discussions about sustainable living and decreasing your debt to allow you more time,” Herr said.”
But living on the bus — a home with no fixed address — creates some unique problems.
“I want to push some of our legal laws a little bit as far as this physical address thing,” Herr explained. “It’s too burdensome. They require me to present three forms of commerce to get a driver’s license. What about voting? Pistol permits? Stuff like that. People will say, ‘Oh, you can just use your mom’s address.’ But I don’t think that is where our legal mumbo jumbo should be. I should be very open and truthful with my answers, I live in a bus.
“I think the biggest argument is, ‘how do they find you?’ The digital world has really opened up this thing. The physical address really isn’t as important (as it used to be prior to the digital age). Essentially nobody uses snail mail. We’re moving on and change is hard, but the law needs to follow along. The government is supposed to be there to gives us these freedoms. This current political atmosphere is really interesting. Between build the wall and anti Muslim. This country is founded on opportunity, (on immigrants).”
Both Herr and Platen want to use art, and the bus, as a way to create a dialogue in a society that is moving more toward insults and arguments than civil conversations.
To that end, the artwork on the bus spans the spectrum from Neil deGrasse Tyson, Colin Kapernick, a police officer from Arkansas, Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.
“Hendrix and Morrison draw people in and then they ask, ‘Who is this guy,’ and they are introduced to an astrophysicist,” Herr said. “Tysen was painted in New York, right in Times Square.”
“You and I might think different things about a certain topic, but the fact
that we can talk about it, perhaps we can change things for the better,” Herr
said.
One time a fellow said to Herr, “We need to build that wall.” “And I asked him, ‘What kind of American are you? You must be at least 90 percent Native American,’” Herr said with a chuckle. “And it stopped him in his tracks. I think he had some sort of epiphany. It’s completely un-American to be anti-immigrant.”
Herr mentioned a study about prisoners who are incarcerated and the resulting brain damage that occurs because their days are all the same, because there is no stimulation.
“Their memories overlap,” Herr said. “It happens in today’s world with the nine to five, everything is the same. This (the bus) breaks that cycle. Just for a day I feel like I am making people live and think outside the box.”
Free spirits indeed.
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or use the contact form on the About page