Hobart Ray Brown, (February 27, 1934 – November 7, 2007) was an American sculptor and the founder of Kinetic Sculpture Racing. Early years Hobart Brown was born in Hess, Oklahoma, to a fifteen-year-old mother who migrated across country to California on the back of her husband's motorcycle. He later described it as his classic Okie experience, mirroring the great migration captured in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and other stories of the Dust Bowl years. Brown went to high school in Los Angeles a couple of classes after Marilyn Monroe, whom he remembered by her real name and described as "a quiet, plain little thing – not at all what she became later." Adult life After a stint as an airplane mechanic with the U.S. Army in Cambrai – Fritsh Kaserne Darmstadt, Germany, and time spent running hot rods with his friends on local empty roads, he become an artist in 1962 and moved to Humboldt County, California. Arriving with his wife and two sons, he opened the first of several Hobart Galleries; the first in Eureka, California, others in Trinidad and finally Ferndale, California. Over the years, the Hobart Galleries represented more than 150 local artists – launching several careers and providing exposure to younger artists by adding them to an established stable of better-known names. Hobart had four children, three boys and one girl. Hobart was instrumental in helping Morris Graves settle in his home in the hills outside Loleta, California. During northern hemisphere winters until 2006, Hobart migrated to Australia, where he was first artist-in-residence at Happ's Winery, later at Leeuwin Wine Estates in Margaret River, Western Australia where his public welding studio was on their patio. His art was also displayed in the winery itself. In 2006-07, Hobart was unable to travel to Australia due to his debility due to the advancement of his severe case of rheumatoid arthritis. Following several months of being in and out of treatment facilities, he suffered a stroke on May 17, 2007. He died of pneumonia in the Redwood Memorial Hospital in Fortuna California on November 7, 2007. Hobart's gallery was sold in January, 2009 to local business owners. Kinetic Sculpture Races In 1969, Hobart started the Kinetic Sculpture Race, almost by accident when he modified his son's tricycle to a five-wheeled, decorated "Pentacycle" and another local artist and gallery owner, Jack Mays, challenged him to a race down