Last year, the artists Mary Mihelic and David Gleeson came across a golden opportunity: Donald Trump’s campaign tour bus, posted for sale on Craigslist for $15,000. The duo, who make up the collective t.Rutt, jumped at the chance to acquire the vehicle. “We bought it within 36 hours of seeing it for sale,” Mihelic recently told the news site Good.is in an interview. “It was pretty quick. I didn't want the Trump people to have time to take the graphics off. But they were pretty much asleep at the switch,” Gleeson added. Since buying the bus, the artists have toured the country creating subversive works about the Republican candidate's run for office, such as American flags embroidered with quotes from Trump’s speeches. This includes stops near the border with Mexico, where they erected a section of Trump's proposed wall. Asked what they hope to do with the bus after the election, Gleeson said he hopes to find the peripatetic project a permanent home: “If he wins, we'd love to find somebody willing to hang the bus upside down in a museum or a huge gallery somewhere. It's emblematic of how much he has succeeded in turning the world upside down. If he loses, we'll try and take it to Hillary's inauguration. I think it will mark a moment when the country was really able to overcome some of its most fear-based and negative impulses.”
