Brightly decorated with streamers, dolls and rubber ducks, IBW English teacher Marrla Wilkinson is taking ‘Keep Portland Weird’ to a whole new level with her attention-grabbing art car. But what’s the story behind the colorful Toyota?
Portland has a variety of weird car traditions that trace back to the late 1980s and span to the present day. One of these traditions is art car parades, where art cars are showcased within larger community parades, including the 82nd Avenue of Roses Parade and the St. Johns Bizarre Parade.
“I started decorating it four years ago,” Wilkinson says. “I used to be involved in this…art car community, so there were all these people in Portland in the 90s that would decorate their cars and put on parades.” She describes seeing cars covered with flamingos and cameras at some of these parades.
“And I thought, I should do that,” Wilkinson says. “I should go get some industrial-strength glue and do something really fun and decorate the car.”
The Portland Art Museum has also hosted an art car showcase, where people with art cars park their vehicles outside of the museum to be featured in a formal exhibition.
Another Portland tradition is the annual PDX soapbox derby, held on the third Saturday of August every year. This derby is a contest where families and friends race down Mt. Tabor’s volcanic slopes in engineless cars, so decorated as to barely be functional. However, these cars are different from art cars showcased in parades: they’re not just decorated, they’re completely handmade.
Over the years, Wilkinson has added various objects to the car, including decorations she finds off the ground, in thrift stores, or things people have given to her. She’s even gotten a few items from students, although she says she wishes she had more.
At the beginning of the car’s four years of fame, students were very interested and even asked to go see it. “One girl, she braided these streamers on the windows,” Wilkinson says.
Besides the inspiration from the art car parades, Wilkinson wants the car to brighten someone’s day when they see it. “I feel like [in] our society right now…it’s so easy to focus on the negative things that are going on, so why not just lighten it up?” she says. “And it’s kind of a statement in a way…let’s take a moment out of your day to have a laugh at this car so that you’re not just driving around in a bad mood or scowling, and also just to inspire people to be artistic.”
Mark Valentine, a Geometry teacher at IBW, has been parking his car next to Wilkinson’s for four years now. After all that time, he says he’s still surprised when he pulls up every morning.“It catches me off guard all the time,” he says. “It’s like, whoa. What’s going on here?”
Wilkinson and Valentine are both freshman teachers at IBW, teaching in the same cohort. Valentine says he knows Wilkinson well and that she is a “unique individual.””I feel like [the car is] a really good way for her to express her uniqueness,” Valentine says.
Whether or not it brightens your day, the car will continue to “keep Portland weird” until it reaches the end of its life, serving as both an IBW controversy and an IBW icon.
