Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette Rebecca Lowe of Garfield turned her 1991 Jeep Cherokee into an "art car" with sand, glitter, beads, figurines and knickknacks. Click photo for larger image.

Rebecca Lowe drives a 1991 Jeep Cherokee, but she's buried it under sand (150 pounds), glitter (60 pounds) and toys (10 bushels and counting).

Her car is her canvas, and depending on your viewpoint, it is either a delightful show for your commute or an assault on your senses from behind the wheel of your stodgy sedan.

"Why?" people ask.

"What?"

"I call it an everyday treasure chest on the bottom of the ocean," Ms. Lowe says. "But it's a treasure chest when you were 9 or 10. It's like the arm from your favorite baby doll or an old Hot Wheel."

Like a growing number of art car artists nationwide, Ms. Lowe, 36, of Bloomfield, expresses herself through her car. The SUV's exterior has been transformed into the bottom of the ocean, with sand covered by three layers of glitter. Beads depicting waterfalls cascade down a shelf bolted on top and flow down the front bumper.

Sticking out of the ocean are toys -- broken toys, toys taken apart and put together differently, once-prized toys you just can't bear to throw away. "Sesame Street's" Elmo grins from on top of a scorpion's body. A Pez witch head glowers from a trophy body. A Scooby-Doo head, sans body, peers off a sculptural roof.

Hot Wheels zoom in every direction. Kids' goggles and google eyes peer out from a back window. A tiny teacup beckons from the hood.

"It is like carrying an extra person on my car," she says. "Lately, it is like carrying an extra person and a half."

Ms. Lowe, the managing director of Attack Theatre in Garfield, hails from Houston, the art car capital of America. She is moving back there this month, mostly to escape the cold winter of Pittsburgh but also so she doesn't feel like such a freak driving through the streets of Pittsburgh in an art car.

Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette One of the bits and pieces that Rebecca Lowe of Garfield used to garnish her 1991 Jeep Cherokee is the top of a Scooby Doo Pez candy dispenser. Click photo for larger image.

"It's nice to be part of a larger group and to have that camaraderie," she said. "Sometimes you feel like a total lunatic [in Pittsburgh], and people are looking at you and saying, 'Why would you do that to a car?' 'You must have a lot of time on your hands.' "

She has trouble going to the grocery store without causing commotion. Some people give her condescending looks, but most people give her the thumbs up, laugh or tell her they love her car.

In Houston, there's even more adulation. Some 300,000 spectators line up each spring to see what is believed to be the largest car art parade in the world. It's grown in the past 19 years from a few cars to 250 zany vehicles, from a fruit-covered fruitmobile, to a car covered in sodded grass, to several cars melded into a hulking preying mantis.

"These are magical creations that really say a lot the more you look at them," says Allen Hill, media and marketing coordinator for the Orange Show, the art car show (www.orangeshow.org).

But Ms. Lowe says Pennsylvania is a lonely place to drive an art car -- something she attributes to the stringent car inspection requirements.

A Pittsburgh mechanic took one look at all the tchotchkes glued to the exterior and listed three possible violations -- protrusions, distractions and sharp edges. (She says the glass on the top of door frames, though, is shatterproof). He told her he would have to bring in a state official for a second opinion before he could give her an inspection sticker.

Never mind, she said.

She drove back to Houston to get it inspected.

Her car will be missed by kids. "Don't go," a neighborhood girl yelled at her, looking longingly at the car.

"I have to move before it snows," Ms. Lowe replied.

"I will put a non-snowy place on your house and your car," the little girl implored.

Attack Theatre dancers, who would often go to performances in her art car, will miss Ms. Lowe's ever-changing mobile artwork.

"Her favorite thing to do on a sunny day is go outside and tinker with her car," says Michele de la Reza, a founder and dancer of Attack Theatre. "What I love about it is it's one big surprise. You can look at it for days and days and even years and you also see something that surprises you."

Art cars are more participatory than most art forms. The pair of goggles, a trophy, a chess piece and other knickknacks were left by passers-by, especially when she hung a bustier on the front grill that says, "Add a treasure to the chest." (She removed the bustier because the car kept overheating.)

People take stuff, too, says Ms. Lowe, who isn't touchy about people touching her textured car. She points to a depression and notices that a toy sun is missing.

Most of the time she doesn't mind. But in an early incarnation of the car, she glued lots of decorated styrofoam heads on it, and vandals ripped off the heads, leaving ugly clumps of glue.

"It was serious vandalism," says Ms. Lowe, who has been working on the car for five years.

Glue is a big issue in her art and something she discusses with others at art car conventions. She used polyurethane for the sand and glitter, and clear silicon caulking for the growing number of toys.

"My art car is an example of the art car theory of adhesiveness, also known as put-more-stuff-on-it," says Ms. Lowe, whose hood doesn't pop up easily anymore.

Ms. Lowe, who wears a nondescript jersey over jeans, says she drives her attention-getting car for herself, not others. "I just like driving it," she says. "Art cars are our way of saying we are not all the same."

	Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette Jean Benton, owner of Costumes Etc. in Middlesex, had her Volkswagen painted multiple colors in 1999, when she was diagnosed with cancer. Click photo for larger image.

Other people try to personalize their cars in more subtle ways. Occasionally a driver will go to Etched in Glass in Richland and have a flower or their names etched into a window. "It happens maybe two or three times a year," said George Masche, owner.

Jean Benton, though, opted for a flamboyant car after she faced a life trauma. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999, and her friend gave her a book called "Ten Fun Things to Do Before You Die" (Hyperion, $9.95).

"Have more fun than anyone else," it advised. So she collaborated with a house painter on a psychedelic design for her Volkswagen bug that is yellow with purple swirls and green with stars.

"Every side is completely different," says Ms. Benton, 60, who splits her time between Steamboat Springs, Colo., and her Middlesex business, Costumes Etc. She rides her car in art car parades and has heard only compliments about her painted bug.

At her five-year clean bill of health, she told her oncologist that she wanted to get rid of her car. But he told her to keep her colorful VW because it warded off the cancer cells.

Plus it keeps her mind off other grave matters.

"You can't have pity parties for yourself because you are always getting a reaction from your car."