I met Mitzi Jo Gordon in 2011 when she launched the Blue Bird Book Bus . This traveling literary project answered her lifelong dream of owning a bookstore and furthered her quest to share book culture with the public. Along with other writers, she drove around the Bay Area, stopping at events and composing on-the-spot poems, and inviting guests on board to experience her curated book collection.

She launched her most notable project, Carmada, in 2014 in partnership with the Gasparilla Festival of Arts. It is a semi-annual exhibit where Gordon invites artists to paint cars in vibrant colors while the public watches at art shows and festivals in what she calls an art-on-wheels project. https://www.artcarmada.com/

In making her portrait, I wanted to capture the essence of her life. She always seems busy, moving from place to place while working on different projects. So, this concept was to capture her fantastic look in her fantastic Carmada car in her then home of St. Petersburg. We shot this at night