2016 Houston Art Car Parade
The annual Art Car Parade, put on by the Orange Show for Visionary Arts and the Art Car Museum, is a Houston institution. The effort and the artistry emanate from every welded panel and every gorilla-glued spangle and toy.
The participants, both the people and their cars, bikes or popcorn machines (seriously, there was one), use their creations as vehicles (pun quite intended) for spreading their messages, be they artistic, civic, political, or just damn fantastical.
For decades, the parade has run down Allen Parkway, taking advantage of its wide breadth and ample green space surrounding it. While the Parkway is under construction this year, the parade was temporarily moved to the skyline district of downtown Houston, where, interestingly enough, is where the parade’s original route ran many years ago. This provided a unique, and utterly unrecreatable, opportunity to juxtapose the profound freedom of the parade (embodied alike in the cars, drivers, and spectators) with the sterile aloofness and rigid lines of skyscrapers.
And, of course, the weather was perfect. That’s Houston.
