Galleries, be gone. Art in Lawrence did not stand still on Saturday.

With no walls to confine it, the Art Tougeau traveling party gave residents of varying degrees of creativity a vehicle for their mild or wild expressions.

“This is the car I drive to work,” Lawrence resident Kevin Kennedy said as he prepared to roll his painted, flower-box-laden station wagon out into parade traffic.

Now a decade old, the annual salute to rolling artwork attracts tons of people from the area – some spectators, many with kids ready to watch the show or ride along with decorated bikes and scooters.

The event was organized and sponsored by the Lawrence Arts Center, Slimmer’s Automotive, Cottin’s Hardware and others, with this year’s running featured 35 entrants winning 17 awards for creativity and style in mobile art.

But the event, of course, focused on the entrants, which included everything from a motorized space ship with a “Support space exploration, send Bush to Mars” sticker to Kennedy’s rolling tribute to gardening.

It was a wild spectacle.

The cars lined up along New Hampshire, sort of straddling the brick crosswalk, the Send Bush to Space ship leading the way.

A man in huge clown overalls played a tune on a banjo, nearly inaudible over the chug of some questionably healthy engines.

“Safety,” a voice boomed through nearby speakers, “is first.”

Sure, there were lots of kids on bikes and people walking little oddly dressed dogs, and organizers seemed concerned about their safety while strolling between cars in the middle of the street.

But some of the vehicles were poised to roll on shaky safety ground as well.

Notably, there was the Ford Escordian, a strung-together contraption created by Lawrence resident John Bowden.

Bowden had this idea to make his average, boxy Ford Escort into a kind of rolling accordion split in half along the beam between the front and rear seats.

While rolling, the car can open and close along this split using a hand brake and the inner workings of an electric garage door. When open, the only thing between the asphalt and the rear passenger’s feet are two thin beams that hold the car together.

How safe was this?

“It isn’t,” Bowden said. “Nobody will ride with me.”

No one could ride with Ty Martin, who brought his partially crushed blue minivan to show off.

A tree crushed the passenger side of the van during the microburst earlier this year. Now, a huge styrofoam I-beam rested along the crushed cab, as if the van had been parked in the wrong spot at some faulty construction site.

It was a big hit, as the hordes of makeshift photographers snapped shot after shot of the van.

But Martin still had to drive this thing, with only a sliver of shattered windshield to see though.

“I vacuumed up some of the glass,” he said. “That’s safe enough.”

Safe or not, the cars and bikes and crushed minivans rolled through cheering crowds, with every participant victorious in his or her creation.

Still fairly new to Lawrence, Bev Fertig sat on the sidelines, trying to take it all in.

While Cincinnati – her old hometown – may be a fine place, Fertig seemed to think Lawrence was a little different, at least today.

“I’ve been in Lawrence for two years now,” she said. “This creativity is amazing.”