HCCTV Up To The Minute_ April 1, 2021
On today’s Up To The Minute, HCC Studio Art Instructor Ashley Hope reports that Houston’s beloved Art Car Parade — now called an Experience — is returning and HCC will be represented. As HCC’s Art Car Advisor, she is joined by student Mickayla Smith, who gives a first-hand account of artistically re-envisioning and transforming an old ambulance to represent rebirth from Hurricane Harvey to COVID.
To learn more about Art Car Experience:
https://www.artcarexperience.com/From this year’s Art Car Experience application, submitted by Professor Hope, “The Art Car Cooperative at Houston Community College is a STEAM project that brings together students from across many disciplines in order to design, engineer, and construct art cars exemplary of HCC's innovative and collaborative spirit. For the 2021 Art Car Event, HCC has transformed an ambulance into a narrative of "rebirth after destruction". The idea was conceived by the students after their realization that they were all at HCC after some sort of struggle. Perhaps it is the character of a community college: The students are grabbing at chances their parents never had, or at second chances they weren’t sure would ever come to them. But always, the idea was about grabbing the opportunity to be more.
I think the students at Houston Community College don’t just feel this way about their college, but also their city. After Harvey, and now Covid, they are communicating their will to overcome, to be reborn after hardship. So they made a design that was meant to offer all Houstonians an opportunity to get to higher ground—hence the title of the project: Terra Firma.
We have a mighty resilient city, and our Art Car entry tells that story: the story of rising from the ashes to bloom. It is a very timely work of art, and hope it gets the chance to be seen this year.”
