Art car parade is Houston’s way to toot its own horn
Personal expression, creativity help drive lots of participation in 31st annual show
More than 20 years ago, Minneapolis native Jan Elftmann decided to give her truck a new look, a unique style.
So she covered it with corks. So many corks. The then-art student and waitress squirreled them away from the wine bottles she served customer until her made-over truck was ready for its debut at the 1996 Houston Art Car Parade. She loved the event so much that she brought the idea to Minnesota, which created a summer art car parade, and she’s made the trek back to Houston ever year since.
“For me it is really about the material, it is not about the drinking,” Elftmann said.
She now drives a 1999 Saab — covered with more than 10,000 cork — that she displayed Saturday among the 286 entries in the Houston Art Car Parade. Tens of thousands of people watched as the 31st annual parade made its way through downtown.
“The goal of the event is to promote personal expression, to promote creativity and basically to show everybody there is an artist inside of us all and all it takes is a little bit of creative thought and what we like to call the thrive to create,” said Jonathan Beitler, spokesman for the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art.
This year’s show featured a record 36 schools, as well as various Harvey heroes, he said. “We had the fire chief, the police chief, the Harris County sheriff, and we had a Harris County meteorologist, as well as a few medical volunteers that helped during Harvey,” Beitler said.
For the second time, Harriet Sharrard participated in the art car parade with a knitted-decorated car that it took a year-and-a-half to create
“It was made by a whole lot of people, it is all about cooperation and just using your skills to make something nice that makes people happy,” said Sharrard, who
measured the car and divided up the knitting among friends.
“This is my regular car I drive every day, it just doesn’t normally wear a sweater,” Sharrard said.
A 1997 Honda Accord covered with hand-broken glass reflected more than just light. Nicole Strine, former president of Houston Art Car Klub, said her entry was laborious and engaging.
“Five months, nights and weekends, when I wasn’t sleeping, eating or working,” Strine said. “But I didn’t do laundry, I didn’t do my dishes, my husband had to clean the house, so five solid months. Sixteen hours Saturdays, 12 Sundays and back at it again, but it was worth it.”
Strine has participated in the Houston Art Car show since 2007.
“She did it as a statement about aging, how our vanity goes away, becomes shattered,” said friend Kearin Miller, who drove Strine’s car.
‘Best thing ever’
Mary Anne and Charles Fried have decorated nine cars for 11 parades. They typically do a new car every year, but this time they decided to modify last year’s entry by adding small alebrijes — Mexican folk art — to the hood.
“We went to Mexico City, and they have a whole parade that is only alebrijes, and we saw it and we said, ‘We have to do one of those’,” Mary Anne Fried said.
The couple moved from Denver in 1992 and fell in love with the Houston event.
“We thought the art car parade was the best thing ever,” Mary Anne said. “We came every year and one year we had friends come and it was my birthday, mothers’ day and art car parade, and I said ‘This is my weekend, I am having an art car for my birthday.’”
In previous years the Fried family has done homages to artists such as: Gaudi, Monet, Klimt, and to Texas’ musicians.
’A labor of love’
Philadelphia native Chris Odell, who has lived in Houston for 20 years, has come to the art car parade more than nine times.
“I like all of the kind of selfexpression aspects to it, I mean somebody works for months on this and it is fantastic, it has a bunch of bouncing lobsters, you can’t beat that, it is a labor of love,” Odell said as a car decorated with lobsters passed.
The windy and cold weather did not stop art car parade fan Glen Bilderback from continuing his long-time tradition of watching the show.
“It seems to get better every year, it is the best way to spend the Saturday afternoon in Houston of all time,” Bilderback said. “I have been (coming here) since the first one, we try to make it every year because they just get more creative and funnier to watch.”