The city of Santa Rosa, California recently installed a creative new public art project called Cyclisk by artists Mike Grieve and Ilana Spector. The 60-foot tall obelisk is made from recycled bike parts. I’m not sure what message is to be drawn from the fact that it was in part sponsored by Nissan and sits across the street from an auto parts store. Still looks pretty cool. More info on the project can be found at the City of Santa Rosa web site.
Founder and Editor at Broken Sidewalk
Branden founded Broken Sidewalk in 2008 while practicing architecture in Louisville. He continued the site for seven years while living in New York City, returning to Louisville in 2016. Branden is a graduate of the College of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, and has covered architecture, design, and urbanism for The Architect's Newspaper, Designers & Books, Inhabitat, and the American Institute of Architects.
Latest posts by Branden Klayko (see all)
Crumpled up dead horses: not art
Crumpled up dead cars: not art
Crumpled up dead sneakers: not art
Crumpled up dead bikes: “art”
When is a bike truly beyond repair? When the frame is structurally unsound. When does that happen? Very rarely. You can’t find enough such frames to build such a structure. Some repariable bikes were butchered to build this “obelisk”. This “art” is anti-bicycle.
Art is in the eye of the beholder. Just check out the crumpled up dead cars hanging on the wall in the Kentucky Center for the Arts. Or car-henge? I think I have seen “dead sneaker” art somewhere, too.
There is something to your “when is a bike beyond repair” argument, and I agree that not every bike in that thing was beyond saving. I think in this case, though, the artwork is pretty nice on its own as a visual piece and I can appreciate it as such.