The 35th Annual Houston Art Car Parade Weekend presented by Team Gillman (April 7-10) announced Bun B as the grand marshal of the 2022 parade, slated to roll through downtown on Saturday, April 9. Bun B follows in the footsteps of luminaries such as Cheech Marin, Dan Aykroyd, J.J. Watt, The Art Guys, Annise Parker, Kinky Friedman, Lynn Wyatt and George Clinton, to name a few.

“It’s a great time to be Bun B in Houston,” laughed Bun B. He added, “It’s a great thing for families and we haven’t had a lot of opportunities in Houston to really have a great event where everyone and their family could come out and enjoy it, but the Art Car Parade is going to provide us that and I’m so proud and honored to be the 2022 Grand Marshal.”

Bernard Freeman, aka “Bun B”, is known for being a Grammy-nominated hip-hop artist who hails from Port Arthur, Texas and is primarily associated with the Southern rap movement he helped pioneer as a founding member of the duo UGK (Underground Kingz) alongside fellow emcee Pimp C in the late eighties. He also has an affinity for car culture and is a known car enthusiast having participated many times in the 3000-mile six-day trip for car rally Gumball. From selling millions of albums to Grammy nominations, changing academia, publishing, sneaker, food, and car culture, plus philanthropy, there isn’t much that Bun B hasn’t done. Now he can add grand marshal of Houston’s most storied parade to the list.

The announcement took place at the Art Car Parade’s Kickoff Party at The Ion innovation and community hub. The event, free and open to the public, which included over 50 Art Cars, window art and artistically rendered soccer balls. Guests were satiated by the popular food trucks, It’s a Wrap and El Topo. Drink sponsors for the evening included cold brews by Saint Arnold Brewing Company and bubbles by Perrier. The event atmosphere was kept lively via the musical stylings of DJ Chaney, who added his signature musical creativity to the visual creativity that was present in abundance both inside and outside of The Ion.

“I was ecstatic to be able to bring Art Car to The Ion and to Houston’s innovation community via the 2022 Kickoff Event,” noted Tommy Ralph Pace, Executive Director of the Orange Show of Visionary Art. He added, “The Art Car Parade and The Ion are aligned in their collective missions to bring together the entirety of the Houston community and celebrate it. When we approached The Ion about potentially hosting this event there, they were immediately on-board. It was great to have Art Cars descend upon the Ion District and enhance what The Ion and the Ion District are building from a public art perspective.”

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.

Celebrating 35 years of “the drive to create,” the Houston Art Car Parade presented by Team Gillman is produced by the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art as a four-day celebration of the unique, unusual, and visionary form of art – Art Cars. Since its beginning as a small gathering of like-minded creatives in the mid-1980’s, the Houston Art Car Parade has grown into the world’s largest celebration of its kind and one of Houston’s largest free public events, showcasing nearly 250 entries designed by professional and amateur artists, schools and youth groups, and individuals or groups from across the country who have an idea and a set of wheels. The 35th Annual Houston Art Car Parade is proudly presented by Team Gillman, with support from the City of Houston through the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, the Houston Arts Alliance, Silver Eagle Distributors, Saint Arnold Brewing Company, Discovery Green, Mattel, Inc., Pico’s, Universal Technical Institute, and others. For more information visit www.thehoustonartcarparade.com.