And as usual, it’s at a price that can’t be beat: free.
The oldest and largest festival of its type in the world takes over Houston featuring multiple days of excitement and creativity. The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art’s Houston Art Car Festival and Parade, presented by Team Gillman, will feature more than 250 mobile masterpieces designed and created by artists, individuals, schools, non-profits, corporations and anyone with a dream and a set of wheels. This year’s highlights will include Brock Wagner, Saint Arnold’s founder and brewer, as grand marshal and displays by world-renowned sculptor David Best, The Orange Show’s 2024 artist in residence.
The Houston Press got the chance to chat with some of the educators who have used the Art Car Parade as a tool in the classroom, and here’s how they have worked this Houston tradition into their curriculum.
“I had always wanted to be a part of the Art Car Parade,” said Westbury High School’s Victoria Tarkington, an art teacher. “When I first moved to Houston, I had no idea what the Art Car Parade was, but I knew a teacher who participated in it. I thought that was so cool.”
Naturally, she had questions about how to get involved, how to find a car, how to finance the experience and all else that goes with it. Thankfully, she was met with a resounding group of other educators who know how to use the Art Car Parade as a teaching moment.
Enter Rebecca Bass.
Bass has been involved in the Art Car Parade since its inception in 1988, and after retiring from teaching, she now is the education coordinator for the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, the producers of the Art Car Parade.
Sipping and strolling never looked more refined. The parade officials consider anything with wheels as a possible entry - ranging from unicycles to wagons and even roller skating drag queens, and of course all the cars. It's a uniquely Houston thing.
Photo by Danitza Ladwig
The meeting between Bass and Tarkington was star-crossed, and it came just when Tarkington needed it the most.
“I struggled. I was trying hard last year to get a car. My students knew about it, and I was working with a few people to get one donated. It just never happened. Then, Rebecca Bass reached out to me at the beginning of this school year, asked if I was interested in participating and she knew a way to get a car to me,” Tarkington said.
“I said that I was 100 percent down for that. I'd love to participate, and if someone wants to donate a car, even better. That helped us out significantly. Once we got the ball rolling on that, I got a group of students together, and we've been working on our entry ever since.”
Just like a certain song phrase made popular by both a folk rock group and a tousled hair queen of rock, big wheels do indeed keep on turning, and this is the type of programming the Art Car Parade organizers like to see.
The proof is in the pudding.
Through its longtime partnership with the Houston Independent School district, the Orange Show has continued its tradition of integrating art car-related programming into the curriculum throughout the district and beyond. The result is the participation of 30-plus schools and youth groups from across the state who have designed and built art cars under the instruction of their teachers or mentors.
Team Gillman has strengthened its alliance with The Orange Show even further this year by kicking off a new annual partnership that will provide 10 vehicles per year to Houston-area schools for the purpose of building an art car to be presented in the parade.
That type of overarching work that provides access to the arts is something Bass could not be prouder of.
“As an educator, the connection that you make with your art car kids lasts a lifetime. You become so close working together as a team in this creative endeavor, and you bond with them in an amazing way,” Bass said.
As a participant in the art car parade for since its genesis, Bass has seen the impact it has made not only in her life but also the lives of her students throughout the years.
“I have students from the very first art car parade, and with the wonders of Facebook, they've tracked me down, and they're just awesome,” she said. “I've realized how important that experience is for them to have that sense of belonging, and usually it's kids that don't really shine anywhere else. But with the Art Car Parade, they are a star for five days, and it is invaluable. The whole experience . . . I would not trade it for anything.”
The Art Car Parade will take place on Saturday, April 13 on Allen Parkway between Bagby and Dallas with lineup beginning at 11 a.m. and the parade at 2 p.m. The parade is free to attend.
