Windsor roundabout pranksters use junker art to rib PG&E

Only a fortunate few caught a glimpse of the guerrilla art that appeared the other day in the center of one of Windsor’s two brand-new traffic circles.

It was a gloriously homely, all-blue former police car with a couple of high-backed, comfy chairs in the unhooded trunk and a pink flamingo peeking from a potted bush atop the open-air engine compartment.

The piece of street art contrasted nicely with the lovely, authorized redwood sculpture by Bruce Johnson that was placed earlier at the core of the second roundabout. Both are on Old Redwood Highway near the under-construction Bell Village/Vintage Oaks projects.

I know who gingerly lifted the blue junker onto the bare traffic circle because the pranksters make no secret of being proud of their work.

“We had a lot of fun with it,” said Komron Shahhosseini, a partner in Oakmont Senior Living, the firm building Bell Village. “And it got some people talking, so it did what it was supposed to do.”

Shahhosseini and his crew painted the now-removed art car PG&E blue, and they stuck a PG&E sticker on the driver’s door. It was an artful ribbing of the utility company for not moving more quickly to pluck up the old power poles that stand in the way of progress there in the heart of Windsor.

NOT EVERY WORD of art critic Peter Plagens’s review in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal had Sonoma County painter of uber-vivid landscapes Jack Stuppin walking on clouds.

Critiquing the works that Jack has on exhibit at NYC’s ACA Galleries, Plagens looked down his nose at certain aspects of the Sonoman’s art-making.

But the WSJ review ends on a lofty note. Plagens calls the 27 pieces in Jack’s show “zingers” and adds that his seascapes are the best and that his clouds - “looking as strangely solid as anything ever painted by the great Canadian ‘Group of Seven’ artist Lawren Harris - are his forte.”

FIRE AND KALE: When 6-year-old Kale DeBiase heard last September of the human misery left by the Valley fire, he promptly donated the contents of his piggy bank to the humanitarian relief effort.

Are you sitting down? One of the three residential fires in Santa Rosa on Monday night destroyed the apartment in Rincon Valley that was home to Kale and his family. They lost pretty much everything, and their pet cat was killed.

Today the people at Kale’s school are collecting cash donations and gift cards to help his family replace their lost clothing and other essentials.

Managing the campaign is Lisa Rossi, a great fan of Kale and the fabulous secretary at Douglas Whited School on Sonoma Highway.

AT PEACE WITH PUZZLE: A woman in the Central Valley heard about the fire on Jan. 19 that killed Dave and Kim Carpenters’ dogs, a Boston terrier named Boo and a goldendoodle named Bella, and destroyed much of their Santa Rosa home.

The woman reached Dave Carpenter, told him she’d lost her home to fire in 2000 and she happened to have a litter of Boston terriers. She said she’d like for his family to take two.

Dave told her they’d love to have one, because they hope one day to take in another goldendoodle. The puppy came to the Carpenters with the name “Puzzle,” perfect for a family that’s piecing together its life.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.