Tom Kennedy TIME

Topsy Turvey in San Francisco


Art Car Parade, 2008 (i don't know what city)


eye, gun, fins, what else do you need? (outside Diverseworks)


Art Car Parade, Houston (collage from back in the day)


Art Car Parade, Houston video madness with Tom at a young age
(w/ Ripper the Shark and purple painted lady)


one of Tom's last works- a fire-spewing whale at Burning Man
(Ahab wouldn't stand a chance)

Art Car creator and Houston native Tom Kennedy had his obituary published in TIME magazine this week. OK, it's mostly for his West Coast shenanigans, but the Chron gets a shout out and all those pics of Kennedy cruising in Screwston from the 90s to today can't be wrong.

"He was a fin man. That was Tom Kennedy's specialty when it came to his pioneering work in the art-car movement: dolphins, sharks, whales--Kennedy did all of them. After he succumbed to an unforgiving riptide while bodysurfing near San Francisco's Ocean Beach on April 12 at 48, his close friend Harrod Blank remarked that Kennedy's works were, "ironically, inspired by the sea."... he [drove] his trusty Ripper up and down the roads of Northern California with sharklike restlessness."