Slight Clutter’s Houston [The Orange Show]
© 2009 Katya Horner
It started as one postal carrier’s monument to his favorite, life-extending fruit – the orange. Today, nearly thirty years after his death, Jefferson Davis McKissack’s architectural whimsy is a folk-art masterpiece, bearing witness for any closet funkster, any quirky everyman who’s ever dreamed of stepping beyond the Velvet Elvis and into a world of creative bliss. The Orange Show Monument is Houston’s strangely wonderful giving tree.
Think clowns and lions, wishing wells and wagon wheels. Think rainbows and iron, balconies and admonishments. Think everything childhood and rainbows and goodness, and then splash in a huge wave of orange, and there you have it – the Orange Show Monument. McKissack spent twenty-three years (1956-1979) building the 3,000 square foot maze of imagination. He built it so they would come, and after a bumpy start, come they did, modestly. It wasn’t, however, until after McKissack’s death in 1980 that the Orange Show really flourished with the formation of the Orange Show Foundation (now the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art), a non-profit organization devoted to not only preserving the Orange Show Monument, but also to making art accessible and interesting to ordinary folks. Nowadays, when Houstonians think of the Orange Show, they think not only of the monument, but also of the Beer Can House, the Art Car Festival and the many educational outreach programs that the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art funds.
The Orange Show Monument is located at 2401 Munger Street, just off of Interstate 45. It’s open every Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 PM. Admission is $1 per person.
