biggest honor (part 1)

in january of this year, the memphis brooks museum of art put out a call to all artists living in shelby county to submit designs for a bike rack. the purpose of the request was to fill a need to go green; to have a smaller carbon footprint, and to encourage others to participate in this idea

the submission included a written proposal and 2 power point presentations; one visual of my previous work, one of my proposed design, along with- an artist statement, a biography and resume. in febuary my design was chosen. i hired napoleon boyd of C&N Welding for welding fabrication, and on may 7th we installed. the project was generously funded by jan and al lyons of memphis.

the process began with many days and nights of research. what should a bike rack look like? what are some of the ideas that had been done before? what worked? what didn't work? how do you make an esthetically pleasing, artistically satisfying sculpture that has to function as a bike rack and function well? it's one thing to create a sculpture; this i'm familiar with. it's quite another to make it cycle friendly and neither of the factors becoming secondary to the other.

originally i had one idea that i was pretty set on. then another, then another, and then another. but none of these were blowing me away. whenever you get something that blows you away, you know it's what you gotta do. but at this point, it was just too vague. too many good ideas, but not one right idea.

so, it was late, and raining...and i had the dogs. we all three got in the car and drove to the museum. they dutifully watched and waited as i walked around in the cold misting rain to take in the surroundings; to search for inspiration; to find my clear direction. i thought about the starkness of the white building against the dark sky and imagined it against blue in the day. i thought about the park and how the building was surrounded by trees. i didn't really know what yet, but i felt closer to something. i drove back to the shop and started sketching trees and bikes and somehow they married right before my eyes. it was perfect. just what i was looking for. the thing i could get behind.

after the sketches came the models. i made this to scale of 1 inch = 1 foot. the models were 12in. tall- the final pieces, 12 ft. tall. the models were made of copper and painted black. the final pieces, steel painted black.