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If people judge you by the car you drive, the jury is out on Philo Northup. 

With 3-D yellow and orange flames streaming down its front, a Spanish tile roof and a guitar hanging out from the back, his “Truck in Flux” is quite a sight. 

“The feedback we get is so positive,” said the cartoonist, who drives his creation to work everyday. “It zaps (people), it hits a nerve ... just looking at a car like this in your rear-view mirror when you’ve had a bad day makes you smile.”  

Why send a message with a standardized, mass-produced car when you can attach a nine-foot Gothic cathedral or a cabin with a waving Pope John Paul II to your roof?  

Those were just two examples of the 50 exhibits of rolling art – including Northup’s – on show Saturday night at the ArtCar Bash in The Crucible Art Gallery on lower Ashby. 

The party was a fund-raiser for the four-day ArtCar Fest, a synthesis of fine art and folk art, which ended Sunday. Northup and his partner, Harrod Blank, organized the gathering, the fourth annual reunion of ArtCar creators and fans from the West Coast. 

The festival began Thursday when vehicles covered with anything from golden Buddhas to mooing plastic cows caravaned around the Bay Area.  

The event concluded Sunday with a film and fashion show, as well as an ArtCars entry in the How Berkeley Can You Be? parade. 

In between, the artists visited schools, showed their work at Jack London Square and threw the party at the warehouse-style gallery on Ashby.  

That event attracted people as flamboyant as the vehicles, who came to hear local bands,  

drink beer and admire each other’s creations. 

“It’s very avant-garde, like the Dada, like any other movement in art history,” said Arizona-based artist Kathleen Pearson. She wore a shiny orange jacket, a bonnet tied around her neck and a tapestry dress with Dutch motifs that matched the wooden clogs and windmills on her pink car. 

Not everyone who has joined the 20-year-old trend is a full-time creator. Many, like Kevin Lipps, hold day jobs and decorate cars to free themselves from the daily grind. 

“I decided to make my own Tiki lounge,” said the glass-blower from Eugene, Ore., proudly sitting next to his VW bug with a grass roof, bamboo wipers and two flaming torches. “It is a little bit of paradise when it’s raining.” 

Some people don’t see the point of the art. And that’s half the reason the artists do it. 

“People take cars so serious,” said Lipps. “To deface a car is sacrilege to them.” 

It may not be sacrilege to Ivan Ganchev, an employee at a mortgage brokerage, but that doesn’t mean he’s willing to transform his Escort. 

“I don’t think I could drive to work in a car like that,” he said, looking at Blank’s “Oh my God!” VW bug. 

But work was far from the minds of most Saturday night partygoers. 

“It’s so funky, it’s almost like a playground,” said Pilar Olabarria, whose conservative dress contrasted with the rainbow-colored wigs and the buffoon hats. “A grown-ups playground ... yes, that’s it!”