No Tesla Allowed: Art with a Message, Not a Target

I make mixed-media political art. Sometimes it’s provocative and loud. Sometimes it hits a nerve of truth. And sometimes, it looks like official signage, bold, clear, and impossible to ignore. That’s the case with this latest batch of baddies! Custom aluminum signs reading “No Tesla Allowed, Fire Hazard. Violators will be woke” and “Closed to Tesla Wildfire Hazards.”

This isn’t an attack on innovation, it’s an environmental warning.

I’m calling attention to the cost of so-called clean energy. The mining and extraction of lithium, nickel, cadmium, and cobalt metals used in electric vehicle batteries is a growing ecological threat. It’s marketed as the future, but it mirrors the same destructive patterns of the past: open-pit mining, polluted water, devastated ecosystems, and inhumane conditions. This isn’t the future of humanity it’s the past wrapped in a new green wrapper.

These signs are street art with a pulse. Satirical, sharp, and designed to prevent a spark with a second glance, not just at the sign, but at the deeper truth behind “sustainability.”

If you’ve ever watched a forest burn or lived through fire season in California, you understand the urgency. What’s being sold as progress can leave a scar or worse, a spark. These cars burn like piccolo Petes, and there’s no off switch. They burn lithium, polluting the environment around them for hours. Avoiding them parked in our wooded communities and national forests, protects and preserves our Earth.

This isn’t about canceling car innovation. It’s about asking better questions on the road to doing so.

And yes, violators will be woke.