Bicycle Art, Begining My 10th Year

I've been working on this piece most of the summer, now the hard part, showing and promoting! I've tried many ways to market and show this type of work with only limited success. For this set, I put about everything I know into it. I think I've done some of my best work to date

Parts Collage Table & Stools

Overhead View

Previews - Coming Attractions

First up is a part of the two furniture groups I've been working on. The piece below is a seat for a bar stool. It is three symmetrical layers of brake arms. These are parts from the brake cluster on the front or back wheels. I weld them together in three layers and they make a seat that is no less comfortable than any wooden stool top!

The view below is the underside, although either side could be the top!

The bag below is the first of the full size leather bags I'm making!

Spring Auction Season!

Spring has been Auction time, a time to help some good organizations! The Lunch Box in the following post was bid up to $725.00 for the benefit of BICAS and Ballet Tucson. It was a fun afternoon at La Encantata Shopping Plaza with a nice lunch and Mimosas. It was fun to see my piece bid on by so many people. It was the highest bid piece that was an actual "lunch box" , and other pieces went for even more. The day seemed like a success for the benefactors and that's what mattered most! The next auction was to benefit a great place (where I do my screen printing, by the why) that has had some issues with the space in which it operates. It's called the Gloo Factory and has been printing all types of shirts, stickers, signs, buttons for many of the great local non-profits, artists & arts organizations, political campaigns and all kinds of things I'm probably overlooking, for years, and Dwight (who runs things) may lose his space and I contributed two handbags for the "SAVE THE GLOO FACTORY" benefit auction. After that I donated a Gear Clock to the KXCI Online Auction. The clocks continue to sell, slowly but surely, for almost 10 years now! As summer approaches, I'm making a collaborative piece that's first rate art furniture and quite unique. Photos coming soon!

Tucson Urban Picnic 2010

This is a piece I made for the 2010 Tucson Urban Picnic. The event is on April 23, 2010 at the La En Cantata Shopping Center. Tickets are a mere $45.00 with proceeds going to Tucson Ballet and B.I.C.A.S. (10% of the total). Although I made a similar piece in 2004 (highest bid piece that year!), this piece is a little different. This years piece has a carbon fiber handle ($$$ in bike culture) and four of the six sides of this piece were made as one! The previous piece (from 2004, scroll down for images), was 6 different panels fitted together. This year, I included keys on every side ( I think) and a better fastening device (store bought, along with the hinge). I also tried to incorporate tools in this years entry. Who knew that people actually collected art lunch boxes, or that there were Urban Picnics all over the country!

Side view with key and wrench!

Other side has 7/16 wrench!

Bottom has a sealed (possibly) skateboard bearing!

Top view show brake levers on lid and closure (no cotter pin!)!

View inside the box!


First side constructed is the last picture!

El Groupo Youth Cycling Trailer

This is a trailer that I've been working on since late January. It's for a Tucson based youth cycling group. It still lacks bike mounting hardware and a few minor details, but this is pretty much complete. These young men and women are really dedicated and I wish there was something like this around when I was their ages. And they're good! They win races and they have support from a lot of great people in the Tucson area, and there are a number of people, like myself, who donate time and effort and help this "groupo" get to the next level. I thoroughly believe that you have to show young people the attention to detail it takes to make it to the next level, in whatever you do, and instilling that pride in a job well done is a quality that isn't easily learned. You have to want it!

The trailer has independent suspension, not a thru axle. It will work great for getting to mountain bike races as well looking good when they arrive!



Gear welded on to back of fender.



Having owned a trailer before, I figured that the handlebar would be helpful, the bike gear adds style points! We wanted to have the bike parts be chrome, but, the powder coater said the chrome may bubble under the high heat it takes to bake the finish.

The tail lights are made from steel cranks and brake parts!

Dark blue and yellow are the team colors, BTW!

The B.I.C.A.S. Clock

This piece was made in 2004 and hung on the wall next to the door for a number of years. A little while back it fell or was knocked off the wall somehow and it needed repaired. I added a new bottom cluster to the piece and did some touch up painting and it's back on display in the newly redone B.I.C.A.S. Gallery! The chain ring on the top of this piece is a vintage skip tooth one that I found and had plated. The main piece is the back side of a chain guard. The bottom is a symmetrical gear cluster with a lock ring and a bearing for detail.

Chrome piece inside the chain ring is from a spoke guard and had plastic around it. The slender piece under the chain ring with the two bearings is from the front of the chain guard.

The Art of Engineering a Science Project

My year has started off with a few community service projects for BICAS. The first is with a Jr. High student (St. Michael's, Tucson) named Max. Max wanted to make a bike with a fan powered sail! Even though I'm pretty good at design on the fly, I'm not able to defy physics, do the impossible, or send off a kid with something that will surely cause an accident or injury. That said, we talked out the options and decided to make a land yahat, sand sailer, blow cart, or whatever you want to call a 3 wheeled sail powered vehicle. To keep the thing light, we opted for state of the art, used metal bed headboard, for the frame. For the seat, a old Prop 201 metal sign. The bmx bike frame welded to the front for steering has a fork for a 26" rim on the front with a working v-brake. The rear wheels are 20" rims with 2 rear triangles from old bmx bikes. The steering is rope assisted by derailers made into pulleys and a couple of store bought pulleys. The mast is a headset and solid steel schwinn fork and headset assembly in a little different configuration than intended (!), with a derailer pulley to hoist the sail. The sail (black, gray, and white camo) is 5 1/2' tall x 3' on the bottom and grommeted. The mast is able to swing from side to side without hitting the rider. We decided to not make the sail larger because of the wheel size being much larger than most of these types of designs. It should go way fast enough for a 15 year old on a windy day, in an empty parking lot! This is the first project I'm aware of that has been done at BICAS for a student science project for a school science fair. I hope it's something that can be done on a regular basis with all kinds of different things that students dream up!