posted Tues August 17 2004

A Student Buys a Truck and Hits the Road to Re-create the Countryside.

'Quixotic' painter spends the summer chasing an artful adventure in Bucks.

By Leslie A. Pappas, inquirer staff writer

Friends of Alex Cohen know his mind moves in big, unusual ways. So they
weren't surprised when the 23-year-old art student from Bucks County
decided to refurbish an old mail truck and spend his summer as a
vagabond art peddler.
" A lot of people have these kinds of whims," childhood friend Emily
Falk said. "But Alex actually follows through with it."
Driving around, painting landscapes, and selling art out of the back of
a truck seemed a "quixotic" and "whimsical" way to spend a summer,
Cohen said.
He had just finished a landscape class at the Pennsylvania Academy of
the Fine Arts, where he studies oil painting, had read Steinbeck's
Travels With Charley, and was itching to explore and paint the
countryside. "I thought that it was just a wonderful, romantic idea."
So in April, he bought a 1988 mail truck on eBay for $3,200, added
windows and inside lights, and painted "The Magpie Mobile Mercantile"
on the side.
" He wanted to put a little more adventure into the art experience,"
said Jan Lipes, a doctor-turned-painter from New Hope, whom Cohen's
mother calls his mentor.
Cohen chose the magpie as his logo because the bird is "a harlequin
marauder who has a peculiar affinity for things that sparkle and
shine," he told Lipes in an e-mail. "The bird collects all these
wonderful ornate treasures and displays them in his trove. A landscape
painter is all too akin to this marvelous creature."
Since June, Cohen has driven "the Merc" around Bucks County, stopping
in scenic spots to paint and wait for customers. Along with his art,
Cohen sells an eclectic array of goods on consignment for friends:
original music CDs, hand-sewn purses of European fabrics, flowers and
basil plants from his parents' garden, a three-foot plastic tub of
mismatched swimwear.
His travels haven't always been carefree.
In fact, the first time he tried to set up his easel, township
officials threatened to lock him up.
That was in early June. Cohen had parked by the historic octagonal
schoolhouse in Wrightstown. He had called the township a few weeks
earlier about permits for the Merc and was told he didn't need any,
Cohen says.
Within minutes, two township officials arrived, responding to a
telephone complaint, and demanded his solicitation permit.
" If you're still here in five minutes, we're going to arrest you,"
Cohen remembers Eileen Bradley, the township's administrator, saying to
him. He said later he couldn't understand why she was so irate.
Undaunted, Cohen went to the township office hoping for an apology. He
left with a permit application. A criminal background check and $100
later, Cohen now has a solicitation permit in Wrightstown Township.
Bradley, who confirmed Cohen's story, says she doesn't know who told
him over the phone that he didn't need a permit. She now calls the June
incident a "misunderstanding."
" That is a very unusual occurrence in Wrightstown," she said. "And I
knew a permit had not been issued."
Cohen now has permits for Newtown and Buckingham Townships as well as
Wrightstown and he occasionally sets up at flea markets like Rice's
Market in Solebury. A Web site, www.themagpie.org, posts his location
each day.
At each stop, he unfolds a card table next to his truck and covers it
with a tablecloth, baskets of tomatoes, miniature cacti, and a royal
blue vase of black-eyed Susans and purple butterfly-bush branches. He
aims for a turn-of-the-century feel, with hand-painted signs that hawk
" resplendent handbags" and music by "acclaimed local minstrels."
He sets up an easel next to the truck and paints on slabs of Masonite,
cut from leftover bird-storage drawers from the Ornithology Department
of the Academy of Natural Sciences, where his mother volunteers.
" I'd never seen anything like that before," said George McManmon of
Richboro, who said the colorful table drew him to the Merc, parked at
the Wycombe train station in Wrightstown. "Is it art or is it a fruit
and vegetable stand?"
Cohen makes no secret about hoping "to rely on confusion" to hook
customers. He likes meeting the locals, who frequently tell him the
history of whatever he's painting. And he savors, sometimes with a
grimace, the unvarnished critiques: "Ugh! Isn't that the ugliest
painting you've ever seen?" was one he heard recently at a flea market.
Cohen knows the Merc won't make him rich. Although several people have
commissioned paintings after seeing his work, Cohen's primary drive is
not money but art.
" It's sort of an excuse for me to paint," he said. "And sometimes,
people stop by."
Contact staff writer Leslie A. Pappas at 215-702-7822