Nancy Josephson drives a 1995 Ford Taurus station wagon that’s a tribute to her father, a New Jersey physician who died three years ago. “This art car is lovingly dedicated to the memory of Benjamin Harris Josephson” is spelled out in ceramic beads on the front of the hood. “1925-1998. Father, father-in-law, grandpa, citizen of the world.” She calls the car the Great Ride–the license plates read GRT RDE1.
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The roof is shared by a beaded fiberglass cow, bear heads from a taxidermist, two serpents that seem to undulate in and out of the car, birds with wings that spin around like pinwheels, and a flower pot that Josephson often fills with plastic bouquets. The undercarriage is fitted with blue neon running lights.
The car attracts so much attention that Josephson, who’s 46, knows that every errand she runs will take her 15 extra minutes. “Yesterday I’m at the grocery store and I’m loading bags into the car, when the guy next to me wants to know all about the car,” she says. “He starts talking about September 11, and it makes him feel good to see my car, a celebratory thing. It was an emotional moment. The other night I pick up my son at O’Hare. He’s coming home from college on a visit, and I am overjoyed to see him. When we return to the car I see a security car with its emergency lights flashing and five guys standing around. I’m so fucked, I think. But all they want is to know about the car.
Josephson graduated from high school early, left home, and lost contact with her father for several years as she made her way as a singer and bass player. “But when my first kid was born, in 1983, I felt it was important for my father to be in my life,” she says. She would visit him in New Jersey a couple of times a year. “You get older and more flexible. And my dad loved his grandchildren.”
After his death, she claimed his station wagon and drove it back to Chicago. Over the next two and a half years she covered plastic panels with beads and various objects, then attached the panels to the car body with silicone caulk, which she calls the “art-car glue of choice.”
