By Daniel Rigney
We’re reporting to you, almost live, from the urban canyons of downtown Houston, Texas, art car capital of the world. Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Houston Art Car Parade, brought to you by the Orange Show, an eccentric and beloved local institution well-known among folk-art enthusiasts with a sense of humor.
With last week’s Kentucky Derby still freshly in mind, I'm calling this event the “Run for the Oranges.”
Mayor Annise Parker is riding today in a banana car that recalls the cartoon illustrations in Richard Scarry’s “Busytown” series of children’s books. An inexperienced photographer with a cheap camera took and edited these pictures as a learning experience. That would be me.
Mayor Parker is the one not wearing a funny hat.
Some 300 cars are rolling in the parade today, along with numerous roller skates, bicycles, and at least one unicycle.
The wheeled creations feature decorative themes of all kinds, both sacred and profane, left and right, gay and straight, comic and serious.
Pirates are big this year, and more than one participant seems to have wandered into the procession from a renaissance fair or a Viking ship.
Political cars bear messages of many stripes. One car is plastered with #OWS-type slogans of the “best democracy money can buy” variety. I wish I’d thought to wiggle my fingers in the air as it passed.
Another “politicar” represents a Dogs-Against-Romney perspective:
That dog in the kiddie car is a stuffed animal.
Enironmentally-green themes seem to outnumber military camo-green ones today, but several cars pay explicit tribute to men and women in the armed services. One valorous vehicle, however, a golf cart followed by a long train of flag-bearing trailers, may err on the side of excess in its display of 51 American flags – one for each state plus a flag representing the disunited states as a whole. You decide whether this counts as a clinical case of flag fetishism.
One of my personal favorites today is the house-car built to promote Project Row Houses, an arts organization based in Houston’s historic and predominantly African-American Third Ward. PRH is helping to rebuild its surrounding community by preserving and extending Houston's "row house" architectural tradition, answering a need for affordable housing by creating and maintaining long, narrow structures similar to the “shotgun houses” of New Orleans.
Just a few days ago, I happen to have talked with a PRH carpenter who told me he'd been working on the art van pictured below, and I’ve been keeping an eye out for it today. Here’s the glimpse I get as it passes by:
Today's parade is multi-hued. The ethnic mosaic of 21st-century Houston would surprise some, as it surprised me when I arrived two years ago. This is not my grandfather's Houston. The art car parade reflects the city’s growing international diversity – seen, for instance, in this Hindu-inspired open-air vehicle:
Why is the art car parade my favorite event of the year in Houston? Is it because I like the idea of art and creativity coming from the grassroots upward, and not always from the elite downward? Is it because the art car parade represents Houston’s growing cultural diversity? Or because the parade is itself a vehicle for the free play of democratic imaginations?
Do I like the parade because it seems to express the art community’s own paradoxical feelings of fascination and aversion toward the conventional and unsustainable auto-industrial culture? And do I like the fact that our folk artists are airing these mixed feelings in the literal shadows of the corporate oil towers of Carbon City?
Or is this my favorite Houston event just because it’s so much fun?
This is Danagram, reporting to you, nearly-live, from the perpetually-strange and ever-changing cultural twilight zone that is Houston, Texas.
I’m taking my own favorite urban transportation home.
P.S.: You are thoughtfully spared my photo of the art roachmobile.
P.P.S.: A Houston Chronicle write-up the following morning (May 13, 2012) reports a crowd of spectators, estimated at 300,000, lining Allen Parkway and downtown streets to witness this public art spectacle.
P.P.P.S: Okay, Zanelle. Here's that roach art you asked to see. Scroll down, please.
Caption Contest: Post your entries below.
We’re reporting to you, almost live, from the urban canyons of downtown Houston, Texas, art car capital of the world. Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Houston Art Car Parade, brought to you by the Orange Show, an eccentric and beloved local institution well-known among folk-art enthusiasts with a sense of humor.
With last week’s Kentucky Derby still freshly in mind, I'm calling this event the “Run for the Oranges.”
Mayor Annise Parker is riding today in a banana car that recalls the cartoon illustrations in Richard Scarry’s “Busytown” series of children’s books. An inexperienced photographer with a cheap camera took and edited these pictures as a learning experience. That would be me.
Mayor Parker is the one not wearing a funny hat.
Some 300 cars are rolling in the parade today, along with numerous roller skates, bicycles, and at least one unicycle.
The wheeled creations feature decorative themes of all kinds, both sacred and profane, left and right, gay and straight, comic and serious.
Pirates are big this year, and more than one participant seems to have wandered into the procession from a renaissance fair or a Viking ship.
Political cars bear messages of many stripes. One car is plastered with #OWS-type slogans of the “best democracy money can buy” variety. I wish I’d thought to wiggle my fingers in the air as it passed.
Another “politicar” represents a Dogs-Against-Romney perspective:
That dog in the kiddie car is a stuffed animal.
Enironmentally-green themes seem to outnumber military camo-green ones today, but several cars pay explicit tribute to men and women in the armed services. One valorous vehicle, however, a golf cart followed by a long train of flag-bearing trailers, may err on the side of excess in its display of 51 American flags – one for each state plus a flag representing the disunited states as a whole. You decide whether this counts as a clinical case of flag fetishism.
One of my personal favorites today is the house-car built to promote Project Row Houses, an arts organization based in Houston’s historic and predominantly African-American Third Ward. PRH is helping to rebuild its surrounding community by preserving and extending Houston's "row house" architectural tradition, answering a need for affordable housing by creating and maintaining long, narrow structures similar to the “shotgun houses” of New Orleans.
Just a few days ago, I happen to have talked with a PRH carpenter who told me he'd been working on the art van pictured below, and I’ve been keeping an eye out for it today. Here’s the glimpse I get as it passes by:
Today's parade is multi-hued. The ethnic mosaic of 21st-century Houston would surprise some, as it surprised me when I arrived two years ago. This is not my grandfather's Houston. The art car parade reflects the city’s growing international diversity – seen, for instance, in this Hindu-inspired open-air vehicle:
Why is the art car parade my favorite event of the year in Houston? Is it because I like the idea of art and creativity coming from the grassroots upward, and not always from the elite downward? Is it because the art car parade represents Houston’s growing cultural diversity? Or because the parade is itself a vehicle for the free play of democratic imaginations?
Do I like the parade because it seems to express the art community’s own paradoxical feelings of fascination and aversion toward the conventional and unsustainable auto-industrial culture? And do I like the fact that our folk artists are airing these mixed feelings in the literal shadows of the corporate oil towers of Carbon City?
Or is this my favorite Houston event just because it’s so much fun?
This is Danagram, reporting to you, nearly-live, from the perpetually-strange and ever-changing cultural twilight zone that is Houston, Texas.
I’m taking my own favorite urban transportation home.
P.S.: You are thoughtfully spared my photo of the art roachmobile.
P.P.S.: A Houston Chronicle write-up the following morning (May 13, 2012) reports a crowd of spectators, estimated at 300,000, lining Allen Parkway and downtown streets to witness this public art spectacle.
P.P.P.S: Okay, Zanelle. Here's that roach art you asked to see. Scroll down, please.
Caption Contest: Post your entries below.
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