"Lost Power Restored" by Blue Sky Renowned artist, Blue Sky (born 1938 as Warren Edward Johnson) best known for his 50 foot by 75 foot internationally acclaimed mural "Tunnelvision" projected to be featured at the National Museum in Sweden this fall, has suffered a recent ironic loss.

Earlier this year, two of his trademark "Car Face" car paintings were run over by a car.

While transporting them on the top of his vintage Volkswagen camper from the downtown "Vista" of Columbia where they were on loan, back to the funky "Five Points" area where his gallery is, the bungee cords snapped and both paintings flew through the air onto Pendleton Street, near the University of South Carolina.

"Coop de Ville" and "Lost Power Restored," well received large scale paintings, both five feet by six feet, were ironically damaged and one was virtually deconstructed by a car. "Coop de Ville," a play on the word Coup, represents the inevitable conclusion of an old circa 1956 Cadillac in the south as it becomes a luxurious chicken coop. The Strom Thurmond bumper sticker is still visible. "Lost Power Restored," depicts the face of a circa 1938 Dodge and refers to the visible old STP bumper sticker making reference to their early commercials touting 'restores loss power.'

No cars were within a block of the incident at the onset except for the artist's wife and gallery owner Lynn. She was following in her Volvo S/W, after the artist took the time to stomp on the brakes, stop the vehicle, put the VW in neutral, put on the handbrakes, cut the engine off, unbuckle his seat belt, get out of the camper to retrieve the paintings, one of which was blown over into the oncoming lane, a student inadvertently ran over the painting. Running completely over the painting would have done minimal damage, but while bystanders, the artist, and his wife looked on in horror, the student, finally seeing the painting at the last minute, slammed on the brakes of her Dodge Durango SUV, and skidded across the face of the painting, shredding it to bits as it was ground into the pavement. The entire right side of the work was obliterated.

To add insult to injury, the student refused to remove the SUV with the oversized tires from the painting until a composed and cool- headed policeman arrived because she thought she had gotten into an accident. (She did hit a car after all... even if it was just a painting of a car.) In fact, the student wouldn't even acknowledge anyone was talking to her when asked to remove her car so that the $30,000 painting could be retrieved. She was worried about her tires.

No charges were filed by either party, but considering that so many people have threatened to drive into Sky's realistic "Tunnelvision" mural, it appears that something like this was bound to happen eventually. Add to that the 40- plus years of transporting his large scale works of art on top of a melange of convertibles and cars, the odds were in favor of this thematically ironic experience.

To try to "re- Coop" their losses, the Blue Sky Gallery salvaged and mounted the torn canvas pieces of "Coop de Ville" on stretched canvas and offered them for sale at the gallery. The pieces, now on display until July 30, sold to one collector before they could even be hung. A postcard of the entire painting in its original whole state will be presented with each of the twelve pieces, five of which have been termed "scrap metal" abstracts. The seven salvaged pieces included vignettes of the grill, the left headlight depicting the anthromorphic "eye" of the car, the hood ornament, the mother hen, the chicks, the rooster, and a cow.

The other painting, "Lost Power Restored" lately featured in lectures by Mary Lynn Kotz (Rauschenberg's biographer), suffered minimal damage as it simply fell into the street shattering the stretcher bars into splinters. It will not be offered at this time.

Both paintings can be seen on the website as well at www.blueskyart.com.

For more information contact Lynn Sky, Lsky@blueskyart.com, 803- 318-6867; Blue Sky Gallery, 733 Saluda Avenue, Columbia, SC 29205, 803-779-4242, www.blueskyart.com.