Art Cars are back! The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art is thrilled to announce the long-awaited 35th Annual Houston Art Car Parade Weekend presented by Team Gillman will take H-town over April 7-10, 2022 following a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19. The Orange Show’s signature event – Houston’s most iconic and beloved annual celebrations – returns with a vibrant lineup of events and activations that will celebrate and showcase over 250 mobile masterpieces from across the country and engage the public with opportunities to express their personal artistic vision.
The 35th Annual Art Car Parade will take place on April 9 following a 2-year Covid era hiatus with a premium being placed on all-things-kids! Families are encouraged to come out before the start of the parade to unleash the artist in everyone at the H-E-B Kids Creative Zone beginning at 11:00 AM on parade day.
The Kids Creative Zone will feature hands-on interactive art projects and workshops from some of Houston's leading creative institutions in addition to entertainment, food, beverages and more designed with kids in mind. They can even rev up their engines with a mini art car parade of their own made possible by Team Gillman.
April 9 / Kids Zone Performance Schedule – Hosted by Uncle Jumbo:
11am Houston Ballet
11:30am MECA Mariachi & Folklorico Dancers
12pm Houston Children's Chorus
12:30pm Houston Ballet
1pm Diversity in the Arts - Dancers & Drums
1:30pm Uncle Jumbo Sing & Dance
2pm The Parade Rolls!
Team Gillman, one of Houston’s oldest and most established auto retailers, has taken the lead as the presenting sponsor for Houston Art Car Parade Weekend 2022, marrying two of the city’s most recognizable brands and continuing the tradition of honoring Houston’s creative and entrepreneurial spirit. Through Team Gillman’s support, the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art will continue to provide Houston with the world’s oldest and largest celebration of its kind in addition to programming ongoing arts education and outreach to spark creativity in young minds across the region.
This year, the Houston Art Car Parade presented by Team Gillman is dedicated to the late Ann Harithas, a leading figure in Texas’ art community whose efforts to support and create new arts organizations impacted generations of Texas artists and creatives. The Houston Art Car Parade’s grand prize will be permanently named the Ann Harithas Legacy Award and given out annually at the Art Car Awards Ceremony. Harithas was an artist, collector and curator, who is credited with organizing one of the first public exhibitions of Art Cars in Houston in the early 1980s, resulting in a wave of Art Cars being seen on Houston streets.
Thirty-five years since it started in 1986 as a small gathering of 20 artists and a little over a thousand fans, Houston’s Art Car Parade maintains its place as one of the city’s largest free public events, drawing hundreds of thousands of curious spectators to see, hear and revel in the magic of Art Cars. This year, the annual Spring event will feature a large contingent of ‘slow, loud, & bangin’masterpieces – slab cars born out of Houston’s unique contribution to American car culture whose notoriety over the past decade has brought it to the forefront of popular culture – and more than 100 new and never-before-seen Art Cars from around the country like Riders, bike and skater groups, wheeled contraptions, bejeweled roadsters and custom-crafted classics along with the fur-covered, metal-modified, fire-breathing varieties.
Through the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art’s partnership with Houston Independent School District (HISD), Art Car Weekend will also continue its tradition of integrating Art Car-related programming into the curriculum of select schools throughout the district, resulting in dozens of participating schools and youth groups who have designed and built art cars under the instruction of their teachers or mentors.
The complete lineup of Art Cars will be available on the Houston Art Car Parade website – www.thehoustonartcarparade.com in advance of Houston Art Car Parade weekend.
Photos courtesy of the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art.
