Stockland Martel

If you thought the trucker-hat trend was as close as the worlds of the aesthetically aware and drivers of big rigs would ever come, think again. The painter Eric Fischl has organized a mobile art and performance program housed in a handful of custom-designed trucks that will begin touring the country next year.

Lauren Greenfield is among the filmmakers whose work will be featured in "America: Now and Here." Click photo to view clips from her advertising and documentary motion portfolios.

Called “America: Now and Here,” the project will comprise six trailer trucks that, according to an article in The New York Times, “will set up like a miniature state fair, swapping the Tilt-a-Whirls and show pigs for paintings and photographs by artists like Ed Ruscha, Susan Rothenberg, Gregory Crewdson, Laurie Simmons and David Salle; short, conversational plays by writers like Edward Albee and Marsha Norman; and music by artists like Lou Reed, Philip Glass and Roseanne Cash. Four of the truck trailers will partially unfold and link together to create a 3,300-square-foot gallery space, and two more will contain materials for a covered pavilion and a screen and seating area to show short films by documentary makers like Lauren Greenfield and Mitch McCabe.”

It’s an experiment both grand and somehow simple and old-fashioned. And the decidedly unprecious, unpretentious choice of venue—a bunch of big ol’ trucks—is refreshingly welcoming to all. As Fischl explained to the Times, “The art world has become incredibly insular. There’s such a disconnect between what artists are trying to do and how what they make ultimately gets used.”

You can get a preview of “America: Now and Here” this spring, as it makes a stationary debut on May 6 in Kansas City, Missouri, before traveling to Detroit and Chicago. To learn more, visit americanowandhere.org.

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