James Surls is known around the world for the grace, vitality and sense of the mythic that characterize his sculptures in native Texas oak, pine and mesquite. In the context of the art car movement, though, he deserves a different distinction. As chairman of the sculpture department at the University of Houston from 1979 to 1982, Surls founded the Lawndale Annex, the city's first alternative art space. (It now thrives independently as Lawndale Art and Performance Center.) At Lawndale, Surls was in the middle of an art vortex that changed the city's creative culture. Painting and sculpture bloomed with bright colors and recycled materials as young artists began to integrate Houston's venerable Latin American, black and Southern folk-art traditions with their own concerns. A missionary-like commitment to public art took hold. Out of this vibrant mix, some of Houston's first art cars were born.
	Historically speaking, cars are new to the planet. Parades are not. Humans have seen fit to show off our creative wares in many ways. We dress them up, line them up and send them rolling off, right down through the center of our being. We do it in times of peace and we do it when we go to war. We love to bunch up in processions of all sorts, and we love paying homage to those among us who are special - the hunter home from the hill, the warrior hero, the great leader who gives us direction or the eccentric who elevates us with creative magic. The eccentric's magic is what I want to talk about here.
	We have always loved to ride, and riding collectively gives us strength. We love the power of the reins, the feel of the wheel, and ever since we made the turn into the twentieth century, cars have been an extension of ourselves and the driving force directing the primary patterns of our lives. (The ladies' hat industry largely died off when the carriage metamorphosed into the grand touring automobile, because well-dressed women couldn't get their elaborately covered heads inside and still shut the door. What a dilemma!)
	From coast to coast, "cars are us." The west coast has its sun and surf, deep tans and glitter, reflective chrome and a candy-apple-red pure lacquer shine. Across the country, in an apple of a different sort, we feel so full sitting back, wrapped in our finest, being chauffered to and from in a stretch. What a moment.
	Houston is the mixmaster, the stew-pot of the third coast. Art is home-grown here and the make-do idiom brings life to the street. It is the art in art car that makes the parade more than just a line of wild-looking automobiles. This parade is a stir of the complex sources that make Houston such fertile artistic ground.
	In the late 1970s, the stew-pot was boiling, and those of us at Lawndale wanted to have an "art parade." There were about thirty artists, art students and a mixed bag of street types who go together and called a date. Our art parade was on.
	Leading the small procession was a flat-bed truck with a "pan band" on its platform. This band was comprised of seven African American men who worked for the University of Houston. They made all of their instruments at Lawndale. Next in line came the one and only Mr. Bert Long, clad in a thin white flowing gown with two eye-holes cut into it, as the "spirit of art." He was caged in an old jail wagon that was pulled by a mule. Following close behind was an expressive group of artists who went on to be a major vein in the heart of Houston art.
	When the parade started and the pan band struck the steel drums, a phenomenon suddenly occurred. The mule pulling the spirit of art bolted. Now we have a runaway. This mule is fast. The jail wagon and the imprisoned spirit of art are being bounced over curbs and ditches, people are chasing it, the band is playing louder, and the streets are filling with Mexican ladies and little kids who've come out to see what the commotion is about. It took only about 20 minutes to subdue the mule and the art parade made it around the block. We all laughed our hearts out. It was a moment of willingness. What a joy.
	It's been said that when the time is right, you either participate or you get out of the way. When the little roots feed the trunk line there is major growth.
	Well, the time, the place, the action, here it comes, the Mother of Madness herself. In 1985 Ann Harithas steps up pulling the train that unloads the show "Collision" in Houston's back room, and then she opens the door for everyone to see. Marilyn Oshman stirs the stew when she opens the door to Jeff McKissack's Orange Show.
	It is time. Now the road show is building. Houston is at the epicenter of self-expression. The Art Car Parade is born and reflects all the focused energy of a creative city. In the years since, it has become the single most important creative force we as a city have to offer. It is a true initiation to the world at large, and every spring when the door opens, they come, from every walk of life and from every place you can imagine, all with the same thing in mind, being filled with self-expression and walking with free souls.
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