During Art Car Club’s first demolition meeting of the year, around 20 members sanded down the club’s car and removed decorations from last year’s design in the garage after school on Sept. 18.

The club first had to remove its design from last year, which centered on the effects of hurricanes in Houston, to begin construction on this year’s art car design of ocean awareness.

“We always want to make something awareness-themed so our car has actual good coming out of it,” Art Car Co-President and senior Aria Jin said. “We want to focus on a mission and awareness.”

Jin and other officers believe that the club concentrated “way too much” on the awareness aspect last year over the design, so this year, the club focused on the artistic aspect of their design first.

“This year, instead of looking at the specific mission we want to get across, we first thought about something artsy, and then we found a mission from that,” Jin said. “Before we looked at it like, ‘We have to do an awareness thing.’ And now we're looking at the art, and then we're [focusing] on awareness.

Alongside the group working on the car, another group sketched a design for the exterior of a shed that the Art Car Club officers built over the summer to help make art car building “less intimidating” and to incentivize new members to join.

“We decided on a Subway Surfers vibe, with ‘Art Car’ written in that font,” senior Melody Cruz-Ayala said. “And we added different elements, like the car coming out of a broken brick wall.”

In upcoming meetings, the shed design group will start painting their finalized sketches, and officers plan to decorate the interior of the shed with Polaroid photos and fairy lights.

The club will finish the demolition process and begin its new design that members will work on throughout the year before competing in the annual Houston Art Car Parade. Learn more about Art Car Club events through its Instagram @bhs.artcar.