After leaving Alfred University with a graduate degree in fine arts and hefty student loans to pay off, Alleghany Meadows began thinking of ways to make some quick money from his artwork.

He and a friend decided to drive a van full of their paintings across several states, to try to sell them at a Tupperware party hosted by another friend's parents. The idea paid off.

Nine years later, Meadows has upgraded the concept to a mobile crafts gallery he runs from a converted 1967 Airstream trailer.

Many artists wanting to move beyond the reach of traditional galleries have taken their work on the road, whether across town or across the country. The result is usually an art project in its own right, as the renovated trucks and trailers draw curious stares and inquisitive peeks inside.

That, the artists say, is precisely the point.

"We wanted to figure out a way to make our artistic interests functional in the world, so they didn't seem removed and specialized and only for a privileged audience to go and look at," says 25-year-old Brooke Chroman. Along with two fellow art-school graduates, Chroman directs a project in Brooklyn called Parts and Labor Gallery (www.partsandlaborgallery.com).

The "gallery" occupies the back of a commercial moving truck; the walls have been replaced with large panes of Plexiglas, and generator-powered overhead lights have been installed.

The group has hosted four events since late last summer, including displays of handmade cards and "mojo hands," small luck-filled satchels inspired by an African hoodoo tradition. Made by a dozen local artists, the crafts also were handed out through a small window in the truck's side panel.

Though pleased with the new art form they are creating, many artists on the move say the competitive art world pushed them to get more creative.

"I think the work of these mobile artists attests to a frustration with the marketplace and the pitfalls of an overdriven art economy, where collectors and arts professionals often assert control over the process of artistic production," says art scholar and independent curator Christina Vassallo. She is researching the implications of distribution methods in the art world for a book on the subject.

"I see mobile galleries as one of many survival tactics employed by artists," she says. "It allows them to appeal to self-directed collectors on their own, affords a greater degree of flexibility in terms of marketing and self-promotion, and enables artists to seize their entrepreneurial spirit."

Not every artist is an entrepreneur, of course, though some owners of mobile galleries say their self-contained spectacle-makers do the work for them.

"It's intrinsically magnetic, so it helps me in self-marketing," New Hampshire-based artist Ed Kimball says of his revamped 5-by-13-foot V-nose trailer, which he and his partner, C.J. Stephens, use to project their Super-8 films and photography at stops throughout the northeastern United States (www.polisamericastudios.com).

But ultimately, he sees the movable minitheater as a reflection of today's fast-moving culture. "We're keeping pace with a quick, ephemeral world," Kimball says. Some of the inspiration for it came to him as an art student "walking up to that giant fortress of the Whitney Museum and thinking, 'How do you breach those walls?' "

Recognizing the challenges, San Francisco gallery owner Johnny Davis has tried to do something to help unknown artists.

"I support grassroots-level artists," says Davis, 56, owner of Artwork SF, a 15-year-old art-distribution business with more than 1,200 pieces in rotation citywide.

That said, he admits not every new artist who walks in gets to see his or her work up on the walls. Galleries often lose money on artists who are not yet established, says Davis, so he needs to choose his displays carefully.

In addition, some artists need to hit the road to make it big, he says, as it can be harder to gain appeal in your own city. "There's something more exotic about you that way, you're imported."

Meadows, now 35, lives in Aspen, Colo., with his wife and daughter, but he drives his Airstream-cum-pottery gallery across the country four times a year, parking outside museums and universities (www.art-stream.com). He has logged 80,000 miles in five years.

He designed his mobile gallery, with its sleek apricot-colored paneling and rustic cherry wood floor, to feel like a "warm kitchen," he says. He sells everything from $25 mugs to $1,500 sculptures - made by Meadows and other artists - to a wide spectrum of visitors, from art collectors to curators to businesspeople on lunch break.

Meadows says he is not opposed to traditional galleries, but is always looking for "a new interface with the public." For example, he lets chefs use some of his ceramics to serve their food in Aspen restaurants.

"There's no one place to show your artwork," he says.