I Spent a Week Riding a Mutant Vehicle at Burning Man, and Here's What I Learned

We set out across The Playa, the dusty, sunbaked desert basin that Burning Man calls home, aboard an art car dubbed L'Atelier de Wagon. Bikes from far and wide, attracted to the sweet sounds of our speakers, weaved alongside us like dolphins chasing a fishing boat. I finally made it to Nevada's most infamous festival—and I arrived in style.

I feel bad saying it, but being on an art car at Burning Man is kind of like having a Disney Fastpass and walking by all the sad sweaty kids in line.

L'Atelier de Wagon is the brainchild of Marc Fabbri and Gary Geske. Marc is a chef that owns a grape farm and dabbles in commercial real estate in southern Lake Tahoe, California. Gary is in metal fabrication in Bakersfield, California, where the mutant vehicle was brought to life in his garage. In the name of research, I boarded L'Atelier de Wagon for a week to get a better idea of just what they meant when they said they created an "art car."

According to the Burning Man website, a mutant vehicle is an art car classification specifically created for use at Black Rock City, the place nearly 70,000 dirty hippies call home for a week. Despite all the debauchery, there is some order to the chaos: each vehicle must be licensed through the Department of Mutant Vehicles. In order for it to meet mutant standards, it must be "a unique, motorized creation that shows little or no resemblance to their original form, or to any standard street vehicle. Mutant vehicles are radically, stunningly, (usually) permanently, and safely modified from a commercial vehicle." Long story short, it's a hardcore art piece on wheels you can hitch a ride on when you're tired of biking your ass off through the desert.

A huge Insomniac fan, Marc made it a point to find and board the art car that Pasquale Rotella (CEO of Insomniac) built at Burning Man in 2013. When he met Rotella, he was eager to share what Electric Daisy Carnival meant to him and how much money he'd spent attending the past events. But, on The Playa, a world where money means nothing and radical inclusion is key, Pasquale planted a seed, saying, "You need to build something out here instead and share it with the community."

That seed grew into something that looks as if aliens hijacked a wagon along the Oregon Trail and turned it into a moving art gallery, complete with a padded loft that is perfectly outfitted to trip in.

I caught up with Marc to get some insight about the initial inspiration for the vehicle. I was surprised to learn he didn't originally like art until a friend invited him to an art jam. "I didn't know what an art jam was, but I agreed to go for the beer," Marc remembers. He painted a few crude illustrations on the communal canvas and, after returning from a smoke, was astonished to find his work detailed by an amazing artist. "It was my sheep, but better," he laughs. The painter explained that people start an idea and he adds all the final touches to it. With the creative pressure gone, Marc ended up spending three hours collaborating on a huge mural he still has to this day.

Then it dawned on him, "Why don't we do a rolling art jam on The Playa? It made me come out of my shell and it'll make other people come out of their shells. It gives everyone a chance to create and at least try. They can jump in and add to creations and do for everyone. It really makes people smile."

It's one thing to dream up an amazing art car concept, but building it is quite another. Enter Gary. Beneath his laid-back attitude is a hard working man whose hands are so blistered from over 20 years of fabrication experience, he has trouble buttoning up the kilt he dons every day on The Playa. Gary is married to Marc's cousin Tara, and when you've got a guy like Gary in the family, naturally he's the one you ask to build your mutant vehicle. Marc invited the couple to Snow Globe, a festival in Tahoe, and shared his ideas about the car. Gary was immediately on board.

In a little over four months, the original wagon was ready for Burning Man. "Once I start working on things I get real focused and everything, including my lovely wife, gets neglected…" Gary admits. "Once the thing sits in my driveway seven days a week, every day I wake up and go until the neighbors get mad. I quit for the night, pass out on the couch, and roll back out into the garage the next morning and keep working. It's pretty much an obsession those three to four months before The Burn."

Marc and Gary estimate over a thousand hours of labour, equivalent to nearly fifty thousand dollars, and another fifty thousand dollars worth of materials have gone into The Wagon. "Nice sports car or mutant vehicle?" Marc asks himself out loud, "I'll take the art car every time. The feeling you get after watching someone's eyes light up as you roll up next to them in the dark, offer some art supplies and music, and watch them paint for two hours is absolutely priceless."

According to Gary, the biggest challenge about the entire process is accounting for the logistics of actually using the car on-site. He has a rule of always thinking five steps ahead, anticipating everything that could potentially go wrong and planning accordingly. While it may take longer to build methodically, he is one of the very few that can claim he has never broken down on The Playa. Much to his surprise, the biggest topic of conversation amongst mutant vehicle makers is the problems they run into. "That just doesn't make sense to me," he modestly confesses.

After this year's successful outing in the deserts of Nevada, Marc and Gary only intend to build on the success of their rolling canvas. Gary hopes to expand his fabrication business to build other mutant vehicles, sharing that, "there is a lot more freedom in it. It turns fabricating into more of an art instead of being mainly technical and mechanical. It's more relaxing and fun to have creative control while building and be able to surprise people."

Marc intends to take Burning Man's mission statement, "to facilitate and extend the culture that has issued from the Burning Man event into the larger world" to heart by taking the wagon to schools across the country. A realization that solidified after watching the incredibly positive reaction children had to it at the Las Vegas Halloween Parade. The wagon was created to encourage adults to get back in touch with their inner-child. However, instead of just benefitting adults, he wants to do the same for kids by providing a platform that showcases how artistic ventures have a place in the real world.

His eyes light up as he explains, "I hope kids in welding class can ask questions about it, kids that want to become engineers can play in it, and little artists can paint on it and be inspired by interacting with it."

Ennkay Digital.