Home on the Road

Two New Orleans creatives seek out inspiration from a Ford Transit 350.

by

In the fall of 2017, two months after their Popp Fountain New Orleans second line wedding ceremony, Josh Hailey and Brittany Schall headed to a Ford dealership to purchase their first home—on wheels. Nine months later, in an outfitted Ford Transit 350 dubbed the Casa Blanca 2.0, the two embarked on the inaugural season of their joint creative project, VanLifeArtLife, a long-term road trip  to “see new places, new people, new experiences, and to find new inspirations.” The trip was launched with an Instagram post—a photo of the now-iconic VanLifeArtLife sticker, captioned #love and proclaiming: “The road is born :) summer 2018!”

The vanlife social media movement, curated with tags like #vanlife, #camperconversion, and #houseonwheels, depicts a generally youthful and attractive subset of artistically driven people living their best life on the the world’s roads—a far cry from Saturday Night Live’s famous Matt Foley sketch deterring David Spade and Christina Applegate from “living in a van down by the river.” Today, more than 6 million posts have been tagged #vanlife.

Hailey and Schall’s particular iteration of vanlife wanderlust got its start in 2012, when Hailey embarked on his photography project, PHOTAMERICA. In an effort to document the diverse landscapes of the United States and the varied people who populate them, he’s spent the past several years traveling to big cities, small towns, and the spaces in between, conducting interviews with residents and constantly snapping photos. The photos eventually evolved into vibrant photo collages depicting dozens of tiny scenes from each state. During the early years, Hailey was living in the original Casa Blanca, a cargo van with just the right level of wear and tear to give off a weird vibe, prone to breaking down, possessing a sketch factor so as to occasionally draw the attention of local police for a roadside chat.

Schall called her relationship with Hailey a “whirlwind,” tracing its start to their fated meeting in New York City, the hub from which she planned to “see the world” after graduating with her B.F.A from Colorado State University in 2008.

But before meeting Hailey, and after many years struggling as an artist’s assistant, the career-focused Schall had yet to travel anywhere. She had started hosting pop-up galleries in Manhattan’s high-end West Village, and worked around the clock. She hosted an array of national and international artists under her umbrella concept, Where’s North Arts, which she describes as “artists working together, being part of a support system instead of acting in accordance to a cutthroat worldview where everything embodies an ‘all for me, none for you’ attitude.” Later, she would find this spirit embedded in the culture of New Orleans.

[Read this: A Music-Heritage Road Trip: A Driving Guide Linking music capitols in Nashville, Memphis, and New Orleans with colorful environs along the way.]

“I hadn’t left the island of Manhattan in years,” said Schall. “I was working around the clock as a visual artist. The struggle was real. I didn’t have the finances to even breathe.” Her dream version of life in New York slammed head-first into the realities of the art industry and the high costs of city living. Canned goods sufficed for sustenance. She faced criticism from suits guarding the doors to success for working “too slow,” often branded as an “idealist” for her collaborative spirit.

The two artists’ journeys converged when Hailey—two years into his national PHOTAMERICA tour—decided to meet some old friends at the Walter Foods bar one night in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. That same evening, Schall’s friend had also petitioned her to visit Walter Foods after a playful evening of “drink and draw” at a nearby gallery.

After a few minutes together, their conversation revealed an uncanny array of overlapping histories and interests—their mutual love of art included. The two hit it off with a true “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”-level of connections and coincidences. They made plans to meet again. Smitten by Schall’s work, Hailey immediately signed her up to be interviewed for PHOTAMERICA.

“New Orleans is our favorite place to create art."

Within a few short weeks, Schall had ditched her city digs and joined Hailey in Mississippi, his longtime base for Casa Blanca. The following two years brought them even closer. Bolstered by their personal experience as artists, they launched the early stages of a nonprofit together with a mission to spread arts education. When Schall suffered a serious neck injury that threatened her future, Josh was there to assist with even the most basic things.

“We’ve lived together in every situation possible,” said Schall. After she recovered, the two set out to find a community together.

“I traveled the country trying to find a home,” said Hailey, who had established early on that he needed to live below Tennessee, climate-wise. He and Schall ended up choosing New Orleans, a city famous for attracting and keeping creatives.

After their wedding, the couple considered their life as a married couple and decided to depart from the rusty vintage #vanlife aesthetic and buy a brand-new vehicle. Hailey surprised himself with the practical decision. “The engine starts every time,” he said of the Ford van, but having a reliable mode of transportation hasn’t made their adventures any less cool.

Re-creating their shiny new vehicle into a sort of mobile spaceship—designed to take them into the depths of nature’s ancient beauty, but to also function as a work vehicle—required months of frenzied renovation. Hailey recruited friends to help rip out the new interior and replace it with modular shelving to make the space livable.

In late August 2018, the service team at Mac Haik Ford in Jackson, Mississippi, gave Hailey the thumbs up: road ready. Casa Blanca 2.0, post-renovation, passed service and inspection, and what Schall artfully calls the “first draft” of VanLifeArtLife departed New Orleans for the rest of the country.

The van’s end result resembles something like a closet on wheels, or a paired-down camper.

“I built it modularly so that all the cabinets come out and everything snaps into place,” Hailey said of the design. “There is space to create and space to sleep, but at the end of the day it can be converted back into a work vehicle.”

Each artist has six tubs to distribute and organize their things for the road.The interior space can shift, depending on their needs, at any given time. Sometimes a pull-out can serve as a bed; other times, Schall can use the space as a flat place to draw. On the road, they have no need for a kitchen, keeping it minimal with a small portable cooler for water, beers, and snacks, preferring to take their meals out where they can meet friends, taste the local flavor, and immerse themselves in new communities.

[Read this: Rules for the Road—A Guide to Surviving Road trips and Remaining on Talking Terms]

Crayon sketches exacted from paper placemats glitter on the magnetized ceiling of Casa Blanca 2.0, along with maps representing national park visits, assorted stickers, postcards from friends, and bits and pieces of art created or collected on the road.

The wheelhouse isn’t drab either. A dashboard hat lights the way, and a United States map mural, painted by Hailey, completes the cab where hours of conversation, sing-alongs, and podcasts fill the driving hours.

Before heading out, the duo sketches out a rough itinerary based on any known gigs, friends, or bucket-list sites. On the road, Hailey continues his work on PHOTAMERICA, which he considers to be a life-long project, looking to expand his art sales in every state.

Their first trip in 2018 lasted about a month, officially launching from Colorado—where Schall’s family lives—and including stops in Santa Fe and White Sands National Park. Casa Blanca 2.0 then crossed the Arizona border, greeted by the “Grand Canyon State Welcomes You” sign, for visits to Tucson, Camelback Mountain, Phoenix, and plenty of beautiful rock vortexes in between. They stopped at Lake Powell and Antelope Canyon, then on to Los Angeles for a drive up the north coast of California before heading back to Colorado by way of Nevada and Utah.

“Travel is a beautiful thing that everyone should do and learn from,” the pair said in one of their Instagram posts, reflecting on the massive increase of tourism to state parks and nature reserves over the past five years. “But be aware of your surroundings and what you are doing in nature.”

"The beauty of traveling and working is that, for the most part, people are interested in getting to know other artists and creatives and having a more expansive community.”

After their time on the road, the couple put both feet on the ground to celebrate their one-year anniversary in their homebase of New Orleans, where they each keep their own artist loft/studio space in the Bywater.

“New Orleans is our favorite place to create art,” said Schall.

Since relocating to New Orleans, Schall has launched her own avant-garde fashion label, La Adorna, a “wearable art” collection that plays with texture and color. Her bold pieces are constructed out of non-traditional materials often inspired by function. Pieces for Mardi Gras or Burning Man, for example, must be able to withstand extreme conditions, making the most of vinyl, velvet and optical materials. For the winter, pom poms are outfitted to fluffy ear muffs. She adds creative makeup and geometric patterns to her bold designs to form digital collages and showcases her looks at various interactive events. When on the road, Schall has been able to take La Adorna with her thanks to incubator spaces, the shared work environments where she can set up at a sewing machine and chat with the locals for an afternoon.

This July, the couple embarked on a second season of VanLifeArtLife, making their way from Colorado to the Pacific Northwest, then back across the country to New York City for a friend-filled two-year anniversary of both their wedding and their modular Ford 350 before heading back south for pop-up shows and quality time with friends and family, creating art all along the way.

“My focus on the road is always to add to the PHOTAMERICA documentary,” says Hailey. “I pitch the project to other states, the style of art that I make, adding to my stock to be able to sell art in every state,” said Hailey, who usually shoots with his Canon Mark III camera. His smaller camera—his iPhone—provides the snapshots for the filtered images that fill his Instagram feed and dot his website.   

This year’s trip exceeded three months of travel, with prolonged stays in Colorado and Canada. Hailey drove Casa Blanca 2.0 to Burning Man in Black Rock City, Nevada, to honor the ten-year anniversary of his first trip to the arts festival, but the couple’s creative work never stopped; Hailey debuted some new collars from La Adorna, and Schall completed another new project of her own, an art collection focused on female identity and the projection of self. Creating on the road, especially in the fine-art, photorealistic style that Schall is known for, presents challenges that—at times—also serve as inspiration.

“On the road, simple pleasures like good reception are not always available,” said Schall. “Lighting, too. The beauty of traveling and working is that, for the most part, people are interested in getting to know other artists and creatives and having a more expansive community.”

As their Instagram feed attests, home is where you park it. “As documentarians and artists, we are going to try to do our part to be inspired by our beautiful world, but also to help it stay, well, a mystery,” said Hailey. The pair intends to carry this sentiment into the future as they continue to make art, meet new people, and find new and inspiring places on future VanLifeArtLife adventures.

joshhaileystudio.com

brittanyschall.com

vanlifeartlife.com