Houston Trip July 2005: Houston Kitsch Tour
Route from Plano:
I-4 south to Houston and back.
There are several goofy places in Houston I've wanted to go see, but no one would agree to go with me. I finally found some comrades: my sister's triplets, Cole, Riley, and Kelsey. They love kitsch.
First stop, the Orange Show. Roadside America calls it "a stellar example of dementia concretia." It is a tribute to the orange built by Jeff McKissack, who thought it was the perfect food. It took him 25 years to build it on a vacant lot in his neighborhood, and is now run by the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art.
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Next we visit Flower Man. Cleveland Turner has transformed his house and entire yard into a museum of found object art (aka junk). He waved to us as we drove up and kindly gave us a tour of the place, even introduced us to the chickens. Flower man is such a local celebrity that he has his own tribute car in the Art Car Parade, and the city of Houston has converted a vacant lot next door into an outdoor sculpture park. Read the Roadside America article on Flower Man.
We saw a strange sight travelling up Montrose - a house that was being turned inside out! It was the Vortex, a work by local artists. They took two houses that were to be demolished and made a sculpture out of them. The vortex goes all the way through both houses, so you really need to walk around the thing to get the full effect. A cool, but temporary installation.
The Houston heat was taking its toll on us, so we headed home, leaving the Beer Can House for another trip.