Marty Vale’s canvas has four wheels, 125,000 miles and 301 pink flamingos.
What’s up with that?
She’s a cartist — a car artist.
Her hot pink 1991 Toyota Corolla is part road show, part art show.
Festooned with the flamingos are 529 glass stones, 329 shark vertebrae, 152 mini high heels, 147 flowers, 90 metal rectangles, 67 sea shells, 51 gold plastic airplanes, 24 sand dollars, 10 Scrabble tiles, four pineapples and one frog.
On the roof is a Barbie party. Skipper, Ken and their pals lounge around a giant martini glass — one of seven scattered across the car.
And it’s still a work in progress. Vale is constantly on the hunt for new bits and bobs to add to the Corolla that was born factory blue. Adhesives, sealants and high-grade silicone keep Barbie and the birds from taking flight.
Whether parked or cruising, the flamingo-mobile draws crowds and cameras.
I joined a flock of selfie-snappers around her car in the Alderwood mall parking lot.
“What the heck?” one person said.
“Insane,” remarked another.
“I smell a story,” I said.
Vale, 76, is as vibrant as her ride, sporting pink hair, pink clothes and pink eyeshadow.
“It’s a parade wherever I go,” she said.
At events, she joins convoys with cartists in SUVs, hatchbacks, crossovers and sedans covered in gems, gnomes, silverware — even dentures (a Subaru known as Chewbaru). Her car is featured in a national 2025 Art Car Calendar.
“I found other people like me, and more in the whole country,” Vale said. “It’s a movement.”
Closer to home, Vale shares the roads with Shannon Kringen, whose rhinestone-studded 2010 Honda Fit also turns heads. Kringen, a visual and performance artist known as the Goddess Kring, calls her car Opal Moonstone.
“I was inspired by Willy Wonka and the power of imagination,” Kringen said. “I love to spread happy energy and remind people that life can be sparkly and fun.”
Both cartists displayed their cars at Fresh Paint in Everett a few years ago and at last summer’s Fourth of July parade in Bothell.
Vale’s journey into car art started 25 years ago with an orange 1978 Datsun hatchback that needed a new look — not with paint, but with fabric.
“I’m a quilter,” Vale said. “I woke up one night and sat up in my bed and said, ‘I’ve got to quilt my car.’ And so, I did.”
(We all have wild late-night ideas. Vale actually follows through.)
Next was a 1989 Jeep Cherokee she decorated with pink flamingos, complete with seasonal outfits.
Then came the hand-me-down blue Corolla from her parents that became her magnum opus. It expanded beyond flamingos to include plastic airplanes, a nod to her time in the air as a pilot.
A photo album documents her pursuits.
“This is what I look like in the sky,” she said, flipping through snapshots of herself at the controls of a small plane.
“That is me when I went to clown school,” she added, showing more photos. “I was a belly dancer, too. And a kite artist. I had a business making kites.”
Over the years, Vale worked as a medical assistant, office manager and a cytologist.
“I screened pap smears for eight years,” she said. “Then I got really bored.”
A photo shows her rocking a lab coat.
Before settling in Lynnwood in 2017, Vale lived on Mercer Island and ran a senior enrichment business, organizing trips to the opera and doctor’s appointments alike.
Now, she’s a standout in her independent senior living complex.
“I had so many people coming to my birthday party I had to do it in three shifts,” she said.
Her flair for fun is lifelong. In the 1980s, while raising three children in Arlington, she auditioned to be The Everett Herald’s mascot and won the gig by roller-skating in as a clown and singing a jingle she composed: “I’m a paper, I’m a paper. Call me up, I’m just a dime. I’ll be at your doorstep pronto, just call me with your dime.”
At parades, she donned roller skates and an 8-foot-tall rolled-up newspaper costume to toss frisbees to crowds.
“I had the best time,” she said.
She can still sing that “I’m a paper” song as if back when papers were a dime.
Vale was immortalized in the flesh in the 2012 documentary “Beyond Naked” about Seattle’s Fremont Solstice Parade, where bike riders cycle nude through the streets. She wasn’t quite naked.
“I was painted hot pink,” she said.
And, yes, she has the photos to prove it.
Got a story for “What’s Up With That?” Hit me up at reporterbrown@gmail.com or 425-422-7598.
This article was featured in the spring issue of Sound & Summit magazine, a quarterly publication of The Daily Herald exploring Snohomish and Island counties.
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