SF Artist Jay Nelson Hacks Vehicles Into Incredible Faceted Mobile Homes

When life handed SF artist <a href="http://jaynelsonart.com/">Jay Nelson</a> an old Honda CRX for $200, he decided to hack the little hatchback into a completely functional live/work space complete with surf racks. You may remember seeing the coupe cum <a href="http://inhabitat.com/tag/camper">camper</a> vehicle on the cover of <a href="http://www.readymade.com/magazine/issue/issue_51" target="_blank">ReadyMade</a> last year, but this isn't Nelson's only faceted vehicle transformation. He's also hacked a rowboat, a moped, and made an electric airstream-like camper from old bikes. The results of his adaptive hacking are functionally fantastic and geodesically great.

Nelson, who was originally from Southern California, studied painting and drawing at both Bard and CCA.

His work draws from his love of surfing, the beach and experiences he had as a child helping his father do projects around the house.

Rather than build things completely from scratch, Nelson enjoys the challenge of transforming things because of the resulting creativity found in restricted design limitations.

"When we have limits, we have to compensate and force creativity," Nelson says in an interview with CCA.

His collection of adapted campers include functional live and work space, storage, and are fully mobile.

To make his functional vehicle structures, Nelson starts by imagining what he wants to make and then sketching out the concept to figure out how it will be built.

An early sketch of the Honda Civic Camper.

Then he builds the skeleton, which informs the final shape of the addition.

Next comes the plywood cover, whose cracks are filled in and then sanded. After the basic structure is built on, he fiberglasses it and then cuts out windows before a final waterproofing.

The resulting shapes are very geometric and faceted, largely due to his material of choice.

Besides building and transforming mopeds, bikes and cars, Nelson is working on many other installations, including storefronts and their interiors as well as a number of treehouses

Nelson finds a strong correlation between building treehouses and his crazy little geodesic mobiles in that they both have boundaries and limits.