Bikes to art
One of the things I like so much about BICAS is that when a bike part finally becomes useless for its original intended purpose — the threads strip, the springs snap, the metal bends — the part does not go to the scrapyard.
It goes to the art division.
BICAS stands for “Bicycle Inter-Community Arts and Salvage,” and the BICAS Arts program has always been a mainstay at the organization. They hold an annual art auction that draws over 500 people, and is comprised of art pieces made of bicycle parts or, at least, about bicycle parts. They also hold weekly art classes and have art space open to anyone who wants to make art from or about bicycles.
If you’ve never been to the annual art auction, you totally need to go. It’s a real eye-opener.
One former art director at BICAS, Kenneth Armstrong, has a blog now showing some of his work. Kenneth has been tinkering around making sculpture and art with recycled bike parts for several years, and he’s making a real go of it. He is responsible for some of the bike racks and other pieces you might see around Tucson, and he has also commissioned a number of pieces for private parties.
When he calls me I always try to urge him to make more of a business of what he has because I am an admirer of his work and I think he could really make a living doing what he loves. Also, he’s been a great help to me in the past and has solved a few unusual bike-repair problems I’ve had.
Anyway, check out his blog. He has a lot of his work up there.
His work is also on display now at Tohono Chul Park, something for which he is rightly proud. Go check it out and if you have sculpture needs or if you need a bike rack for your shop or office, give him a call.
–Erik Ryberg
June 13th, 2009 at 12:55 am
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June 14th, 2009 at 5:48 am
Welding metal together is not art; the product is not sculpture. The people that weld old bike parts together are welders just trying to make a buck selling scrap metal.
Instead of calling this endeavor ‘bikes to art’, how about something more accurate like ‘bikes to yard ornaments’.
June 14th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Whether you want to call it art or not is irrelevant. I have seen lots of creative, inspiring and fun works at the various ‘yard ornament’ auctions.
It is great to give people ideas about to keep stuff out of the landfill and to reuse these items in interesting ways.
If someone just wanted to make a buck, they would just gather all the scrap metal and sell it to a recycler. These people are either crazy or having fun. Maybe both.
June 14th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
hi,
my name is tony.
I’m a troll.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Art is like anything else that can’t be quantified, that is to say subjective. I find art in the depiction of the nude human body, while others call it pornography. Sculpture is 3 dimensional freestanding art, 3 dimensional art on a surface is a relief and so forth. The fish in the photo at the top of the article is sculpture. Now whether it’s art is a matter of debate, but I like it.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
The word art has meaning. Saying that art ‘can’t be quantified’ or is somehow ’subjective’ is far off the mark. Meaning cannot be used in the negotiation of quantities, only derivatives of meaning can be applied (as functions to forms) in order to produce quantity.
The meaning of a word is not subjective or objective. Meaning is universal; the subjective-objective dynamic is academic and deals only with negotiating the values of reasonable terms. Attempting to define art, or even allowing it to participate in communication with reasonable terms, betrays the meaning, and causes the failure of the attempted statement. For example: ‘Sculpture is three dimensional freestanding art.’ fails because ’sculpture’, ‘3′, ‘dimensional’, ‘freestanding’ are words designed to describe and have definite functions, whereas ‘art’ is irrational, and cannot be said to be the definite product of any known function, or the producer of any known form; The statement is not mathematically sound as it does not provide an actual value for its’ own representation and there cannot be a summation of values produced of its’ constituent terms for the irrationality.
I have noticed that people are often lazy with mathematics. It may be easier to take certain inaccuracies for granted, and it may be that the confusion caused by trying to apply ‘practical-irrationalities’ and the efforts invested in resolving this confusion (often cleaning up the mess) is vocation (even avocation) for many people, but what does this insanity accomplish?
I guess It seems easier to me if people just agree to stop using words with meaning as if meaning can somehow be made-up or negotiated into form in order to function with relative terms.
Jeff- Art is not creative, inspiring, or fun; Art is Art.
June 16th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Tony, it may be that the word “art” has a particularized meaning to God or you or something else, but I think it is pretty clear that it does not have a particularized meaning to the body of people who daily use the word while talking to each other. We’ve all come to agree, more or less, on the meaning of “two” or “freestanding” but we kind of have to fudge it on words like “art” and “God” and “fun.” So I am not sure it’s quite fair of you to tell people that a handmade object whose purpose is to delight the visual senses and inspire thought is not “art.” It just isn’t art to you, the way roller-coaster rides aren’t fun to me and Allah does not happen to be my God. I could easily be wrong about both.
EBR
June 16th, 2009 at 11:08 am
I guess I’m not easily understood. I’m not suggesting that art has a particularized meaning, I am saying that it cannot (and furthermore no word has a particularized meaning unless you are using particularized in place of unique, and this usage would be redundant). The particularized definition is the product of an intellectual negotiation, designed to produce a form (end) to a function (means) within very specific operating parameters; Often the significant factor of influence over an individual mind is the consensus, so it is not often that an individual will have a definition for words like “two” or “freestanding” other then the most popular design. These words are made-up to represent made-up things, proof for the purpose of these words is provided by the person using them; If i need to provide a quantity of something in less than three or more than one, I will find purpose for the function of two, and likely find the function common to you and I (so that we can do stuff like trade evenly and whatnot).
I cannot teach you the terms used in order to negotiate a relative significance or value for the word art; It simply has a unique meaning that translates (in a seemingly vague or broad way) to express a universal experience.
June 16th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Wow! I didn’t realize my work would start a debate on what’s art! WTF! I’ve got ywo comments for Tony, 1. No matter what you think, art is in the eye of the beholder. So if you don’t think it’s art, no problem. 2. If you had bothered to look at my site you’d notice, nothing is for sale, most of the pieces were sold to raise money for BICAS. I wish I could say this art brings in the lots of cash, but it doesn’t. I do this because I want to push the art form and raise money for BICAS. If it wasn’t for BICAS, I might not have become an artist!
June 16th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Well, Kenneth, you might have tried to become an artist, thanks to BICAS, but you did not; People cannot become artists or even claim to be them. The status ‘artist’ is a human condition that people only have reason to try for (like curiosity or pride), with no real idea how, because art is an expression rooted in a sense of self that is irrational, and no idea of art as an ‘it’ or ‘what’ can be derived.
What do you mean by “…nothing is for sale, most of the pieces were sold to raise money for BICAS.”? Are you saying you do not sell your metal work for yourself?
Don’t give yourself too much credit Kenneth, people are calling all sorts of stuff art.
Leaving anything up to the ‘eye of the beholder’ is a cop-out. Basically you are saying that as long as people call your product art, and as long as you feel good about that, you have no concern for the meaning of the word. I am not debating ‘what is art’, that cannot be figured out, I’m pointing out the blatant misuse of the word, in a similar fashion as stamping a name brand on a regular object to make it somehow more appealing to the collectors of regular objects with special names.
June 16th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Tony, YOU HAVE ISSUES & most of the recycled “art” I’ve made has profited BICAS. It may be unAmerician, but, I’m not in it for the money. And your reasoning is much more of a “cop-out” than eye of the beholder. Are you this anal about everything?
June 16th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Kenneth, Thanks. It would be nice of you to engage in the discussion If you would like to, otherwise please don’t clown around.
June 16th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Tony’s right, that stuff doesn’t look anything at all like me.
June 17th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
And I am so creative, inspiring, *and* fun.
You’re just mean!
June 17th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
What a bizarre discussion! Kenneth, I really like your work of art.
Mindy
June 17th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Tony,why not name your five favorite works of art. 2D or 3D. Any era. Show me “art” as you mean it.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:59 am
What about it Tony? I am curious too and I think this is an interesting discussion. You have said that the word “art” has meaning, and you have also said that Kenneth’s work is just welded together scrap metal and that he is not an artist. I think what you are saying is that because Kenneth’s work does not create the “universal experience” you refer to, it isn’t art.
What is? Does Michelangelo’s David make the cut or not?
EBR
June 18th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Art is what I say it is!
June 18th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Alright, the answer is not easy, especially since I have already given the explanation as to why I cannot name (identify) any works of art, and I’m hard-pressed to not repeat myself.
Oh bother, I’ll say it anyway, “…‘art’ is irrational, and cannot be said to be the definite product of any known function, or the producer of any known form”.
The universal experience of ‘art’ does not result in a particular experience, has no discernible pattern of manifestation, is not motive of a specific motion. One might claim that art inspired the mind that moved the hand that held the brush that applied the paint, so-on, and so-forth. This might be close, but still not sure, not absolute; The claim of art as motive makes art force-to-motion, and the dynamic of force-motion is based entirely on the assumed values of relative terms (such as ‘where’).
In order to understand the meaning of the word art, it might be helpful to understand the intellectual process that derives value from worth, or definition from meaning; This is an explanation I am not-yet-well-enough equipped to provide.
I have some clues. There is nothing to know about meaning. People wonder about nothing. Nothing becomes anything. People say it is something. The most popular description of nothing is simply the most popular version of something. It’s like I remember so-and-so saying something-or-other was art, then I told somebody else because I had no Idea what else to call it. I have found that I really have no idea of ‘what art is’ other then what art has been called as I have repeated that which I have heard, and I haven’t found any sense as to how people identify art other then: People are calling everything art, but in the interest of making something seem correct in order to not interfere with the process of eventual-obsolescence (because wrong values will not be used for capital gains) not everybody is willing to admit that if everything is art, nobody can claim to know anything specific of what they are talking about.
Let meaning be, without it people would not have the opportunity to make anything up about it (like it being what we say it is).
June 18th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
I’ll try to fix that stuff later, I’m tired.
June 19th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Oh, so there is no art? Your world sounds lame…
June 19th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
oy vey