About a year ago, a friend and I were in the middle of an all-day thrifting jaunt in suburban Maryland when we headed to a Starbucks for a caffeine boost. Parked outside of the Jewel of India restaurant in a nondescript strip mall was a car that stopped us both in our tracks; it was covered in bits and bobs, rusty spires, ceramic busts, colorful tires, weathervanes, and so many different hub cabs and emblems, that we had no idea if the car underneath it all was a Mercedes, Chevrolet, Plymouth, Buick or something else entirely.

Turns out, it was the latter: In addition to signs featuring quotes and pithy sayings (“It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there,” - B. Dylan and “You won’t need an asteroid for your own personal extinction,” - uncredited), the rolling work of art listed an instagram handle and web address pointing us to the source: Vanadu Art House, and its creator Clarke Bedford.

One year later (almost to the day, accidentally), another friend and I headed out on a Saturday to find Vanadu, which is easy since the free “museum” is always open and its address available on Google Maps. Located on a quiet street lined with small houses in Hyattsville, Maryland (just over the D.C.-Maryland border, and a 30 minute drive from Capitol Hill), Vanadu is Bedford’s private home. But like his vehicles—he had six in 2019, all (somewhat) functional, according to the Washington Post—Bedford’s house is anything but ordinary.

A former conservator at the Hirshhorn Museum, Bedford has worked on his own ever-evolving art project full-time since he got divorced, his children moved out, and he retired in 2013. Unfortunately we weren’t able to speak with Bedford directly (signage on the property encourages unsupervised exploration of the exterior and photography)—and after seeing a memorial tucked in the corner of his back yard we feared we’d missed our chance.

But it turns out, like most things at Vanadu, the memorial made for—and by—Bedford himself, is not quite what it seems. At least as far as I know, Bedford is still very much alive; according to his Instagram, he made the memorial to himself in 2020: “In these uncertain times a memorial to myself is in order, and ready if needed. Uh, ending date can be adjusted as fate will have it.”

Bedford has been making (or restoring other peoples’) art his whole life, and while Vanadu is much greater than the sum of its parts, the parts themselves shine in unexpected ways thanks to Bedford’s unique curation. Not only is he an excellent collector, but he combines objects in ways that give them new meaning: my favorite is the concrete swan, whose head and neck has been replaced by a black-and-white stand mixer.

At first glance it might just seem like Bedford’s property is nothing more than a hoard of rusty detritus, but the collection manages to feel both purposeful as well as organic. It’s impossible to tell what is piled or placed intentionally vs. what has been collected but not yet curated. These types of found-art installations are much more common out West where the dry climate is more hospitable to preservation, but Bedford embraces the inevitable rust and decay that afflicts objects subjected to the East Coast elements.

When we visited, five of Bedford’s vehicles were parked outside, including two large busses in his driveway (you can walk inside of both), and three others on the street in various stages of completion—although whether any work of art is ever truly finished is a distinction that can only be made by the artist themself. When asked by the Post what would happen if he ever ran out of room, Bedford joked that he would kill himself, then laughed: “Nah, I’ll probably just have to go smaller and smaller.”