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The Art Car Traveling Roadshow arrived in West Seattle for the first time Sunday night. Many had shown their stuff at this weekend's the Fremont Solstice Parade and continued on to the Morgan Junction location.

It's an artist collective that has its members decorating their cars in wild and whimsical designs in cars and vans, including some old clunkers that get 5 miles per gallon. (The organization refurbishes their gas.) One car is completely covered in rubber toy monsters, another in dentures and toothpaste tubes. Then there's the car adorned bumper to bumper with women's shoes. About 30 vehicles appeared plus the plus the "Fabulous Elvis Mobile" built by Jo David and West Seattle native, Marlow Harris.

Kelly Lyles of the Delridge neighborhood helped organize the event. She affixed shoes, purses, the "access of accessories" on her Hond Odyssey.

"I'm a painter, www.kellyspot.com. I know almost all of the artists. I keep a list of about 400 people with art cars. I fund-raise. To attach the things to our cars we use big industrial calking guns, and most use silicon. I found a product called Flexible Seal. A guy saw me buying at at Miller Paint and said, 'I'm a roofer in Alaska and that's what I use'."

Rev. C.E. Linville lives in Portland, OR. He has a big station wagon with a faux Jesus theme and has been doing this since 1986. "I'll marry anybody legally in 10 minutes or less or the wedding is free. That's what people like, the faster the better. Some of them have lasted. Some haven't. Same as with anybody. You have to have a sense of humor to have an art car. My cars are frivolous, more like pranks, not art. Portland's like a short angry man. We make up for our lack of stature in our volume and I have a loud PA system and play 1950' hypnotist tapes."

From the Seattle Art Cars Website:

The Seattle Art Cars are a loosely knit group of “cartists” who decorate their “daily drivers” , embellishing these vehicles throughpaint, sculptures or glued assemblage (or combinations thereof).

We formed in 1998 to be part of the ‘Arts Edge’at the Seattle Center, displaying 28 ArtCars as part of the alternative Arts Festival. The following year we moved our rolling exhibit to the world-famous Fremont Fair, where up to 75 decorated cars are on view for 2 days in mid-June every year.

We welcome any and all modified vehicles to appear with us throughout the year at various fairs, children’s schools and neighborhood functions. Our year culminates in the ‘Seattle Art Car Blowout’ at the Fremont Fair, every year on Solstice weekend.

The automobiles come from all over the US and BC to participate. We raise funds throughout the year in order to host the out-of-towner car artists, reimbursing their gas expenses for travel.

Art Cars often caravan in groups to festivals and parades across the country, notably Minneapolis, Houston and the Bay area. The Art Cars liven up the highways in the process. Art Car events are cropping up all over the America, in one of the fastest burgeoning public art movements.

Seattle Art Cars is a 501(c)(3) organization and donations are tax deductable.