Artists Commemorate Woodstock’s 50th Anniversary By Recreating Iconic VW Light Bus

Now, 50 years later, the artist behind the painting of the famous Light Bus is recreating the vehicle! Robert Hieronimus was approached by his friend Bob Grimm, the lead vocalist of a ’60s rock band from Baltimore called “Light” to paint him “a magic bus”. He gave him a 1963 Volkswagen Kombi split-window as a blank canvas and told him to get to work.



It was named “The Light Bus” and Grimm took the bus to Woodstock where it sat parked stage-right for three days. Two musicians from the band Light, Charles “Ricky” Peters and Trudy Cooper, sat on the top of the Light Bus listening to the festival. A photo was taken by an Associated Press photographer that would later be used in Rolling Stone and bringing the legend of the Light Bus to American culture.

Now, for the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, Bob Hieronimus and his team spent months searching for Grimm’s original van but had no luck. They opted for the next best thing and found a 1962 Volkswagen Kombi and got to work recreating the Light Bus. Over the course of 6 weeks, the team re-created the bus exactly, down to the symbolism inside and out, including the four different writing systems featured on the bus (English, Hebrew, Sanskrit and Atlantean).

If you want to see this bus in person, it will be debuted at the 50th anniversary of Woodstock in Watkins Glen this summer.