Randy Polumbo: one man and his dildo van go on a US art tour

Randy Polumbo is a strictly sex-toy artist. Love Stream is his latest offering, an Airstream van covered with hundreds of hand-blown glass phalluses all ablaze with LEDs. It's been designed to spark discussions about sexuality and fertility – at least that's the goal when it takes up residence at New York's Steven Kasher Gallery next week. It's also the culmination of decades' worth of similar projects – and one artist's lifelong obsession with phallic symbolism. "When I started making art, I would play around with male emblems like dildos ," he says. "I was partly fascinated and partly disturbed by these objects – I took footballs, baseballs and bats and turned them into sex toys too. "For three or four years, I only made stuff out of condoms. I was stretching them over wire frames and making these little solar-powered space stations to store them in – precursors to Love Stream." In 2008, his Garden and Grotto of Manifest Destiny – which debuted at the Burning Man festival – saw a 30ft (nine metres) ex-military command truck overrun with lit-up dildos arranged like dangling sea anenomes or delicate posies. Following that, and keen to take his fascination to the most fundamental level, Polumbo set about designing his Buttercup series , in which five giant solar panels were mounted on old gas tanks and covered with rubber sex aids. Now, Polumbo's towing his adorned Airstream into Manhattan. He encourages visitors to approach his artwork with the same sense of abandon he does. "I'm interested in the simple joy of people frolicking in this crazy reflective space that's like a walk-in kaleidoscope," he says. "Or you might see it as a garden, a giant reproductive organ, or one of those quack devices psychoanalysts invented that were meant to cure all ills." After its stint in New York City, the trailer will be towed across the US. "It's eventually going to dock for good on the beach in Florida," Polumbo says. But I like that it can be presented anywhere I want it to." And after this brief aside, he's back to discussing the meaning of Love Stream. "It's interesting to think of it as a giant seed: seeds disperse in the wind and go different places, then evolution kicks in and life erupts." Look out for his flickering, life-erupting macro-disco as it rolls its way across America.