Bikes are comprised of lots of metal parts. Metal doesn't decompose, nor does any of the other parts hanging on bikes. And let's face it, there are crappy bikes out there as well as bikes that have out-lived their safety. So where do all of the terminal bikes go? I would like to think they are lifted up in a shaft of light and sucked into two-wheeled nirvana. But the grim truth is that a sweaty, slightly over-weight and hairy dude in jeans that show his crack, a dirty t-shirt and a yellow hard hat is hauling that scrapped wheel to live out it's half-life in a dump overlooking the Jersey shore. And unfortunately other places in the world that could be scenic. Good thing for us and the bikes, there are people out there trying to keep bikes out of the dump. Re-purposing bikes that were destined for purgatory. This is a little photo essay of some of that work. Starting right here in little ole Moab, we have the WabiSabi thrift store sculpture.
This next one caught my eye. I like the wheel in the middle and the mesh of frames comprising the roof. I'd like too see the rest of this beauty, it's in Belgium. Photo courtesy ForeignNature.com is the photographic index of Jonathan Galbreath.
Arches are naturally occurring. Bikes are not. Neither are bike arches. This one is at Burning Man. You can bet your sweet drunk grandmother's naked ass that there is enough naturally occurring shit happening there to scar any impressionable mind. Mark Grieve created the piece after Larry Harvey, founder of Burning Man, asked him if he was interested in creating a piece for the entrance to Center Camp, an area where people park a lot of bikes. Grieve was inspired to make the piece after a trip to Arches National Park in Utah and by observing nature. The arch took about four months to complete and was a collaborative effort between Grieve and Ilana Spector, a former lawyer and solar energy company president turned welder.
"Pablo Picasso was never called an ass-hole." And in 1942 he made a rather cool and well-known sculpture from some bike parts. "Head of the Bull"
And Before Pablo, there was Marcel Duchamp and his Bicycle Wheel in 1913. The 1913 Bicycle Wheel was lost, but nearly four decades later Duchamp assembled a replacement from newly found prefabricated parts, indicating that the later version was as valid as the original.
The next image was borrowed from creations, the great big sculptures thread on http://fazyluckers.com/discussion/2471/2/the-great-big-sculptures-thread/. Apparently this is in Parc de la Vilette : Paris, France. This one gets two big thumbs up.
And our last artful use of bicycles. Use them as outdoor wallpaper. Or just to confuse the brain right out of a bicycle thief.
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