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Bicycle geometry inspires art for both the body and the home.

Where do old bicycles go to die? What happens to that rusty Norco after it’s popped its last wheelie and laid down its final skid mark? Sure, a few parts may get transplanted into other bikes, but, sadly, for most, it’s off to the landfill, the glue factory of the bicycle world.

Or at least it used to be. More and more deceased bicycles are finding a second life these days, reincarnated as objects of art — jewelry, furniture, and sculpture, among other things. Think of it as putting the cycle back in recycling.

Artists, bike enthusiasts, and other creative devotees of the third “R” are beginning to discover the potential of the bicycle as objet d’art.

Take Brock and Cindy Garvin of Recycled Accessories in Vernon, B.C. Their web business (www.recycledacc.com), launched in 2007, does a brisk trade selling funky jewelry and accessories made from quality recycled bike parts — chains, spokes, and other high-end components transformed into stylish bracelets, necklaces, belt buckles, tie pins, and cufflinks.

A cycling family from way back, the Garvins accumulated a collection of worn out high-end bike parts that Brock just couldn’t let go. Then one day, years ago, their young son asked Brock if he could make him a bracelet out of an old bike chain. That one bracelet begat many more, and eventually the Garvins set up shop on the web.

“We’ve learned that cyclists really, really like their bikes,” Cindy explains. “They’re beautiful machines, with lots of shiny, visually appealing parts. So when a bike’s riding days are done, it’s a shame for those shiny, pretty parts not to be seen and used again.

“Plus, cyclists tend to be proud of their devotion to bike culture and want others to know it. What better way to signal your membership in the tribe than to wear a part of your bike on your wrist or neck or belt?”

Kevin Aronyk is an Edmonton artist who also comes from a bicycling family. His brothers Dennis and Alan run Revolution Cycle, a mainstay of the West Edmonton bicycle scene. While working there part-time as a mechanic a few years ago, Kevin came up with the idea of incorporating old bike parts, especially cogs and chains, into his concrete art projects.

Revolution currently displays two of Aronyk’s re-cycle art works, a concrete table embedded with swooping chains and toothy cogs, and a concave steel ceiling lamp made almost entirely out of dozens of cog rings welded together (the piece was welded over a concrete form shaped by a large exercise ball).
For Aronyk, it’s the shapes of certain bike parts, the circles and teeth patterns, the “sacred geometries,” that he finds particularly beautiful, conducive to art. And when these shapes are taken out of their original context (on a bicycle) and then integrated into a new one (table or lamp), he explains, we can see the parts in a new way, appreciate their inherent beauty, apart from their practical function.

Hornby Island visual artist Stevi Kittleson has even found a use for those bikes that can’t be given a second life on a belt buckle or table top. She’s been photographing the pile of disused, junky bicycles at the small gulf island’s thriving Recycling Depot for years. From these photographs, she creates photo-montage close-ups of old bicycle parts, beautiful arrays of twisted metal, and rusted drop-outs that look like prehistoric fish.  

Kittleson finds decaying bicycles full of surprising esthetic potential. When looked at in isolation, apart from the people who ride them, she explains, “there’s something organic, wild about bikes and certain bike parts.” (Picasso saw this; think of his elegant bull’s head consisting of handlebars above a bike saddle.) Kittleson sees old bikes not so much as machines but as animated objects, full of stories, and vulnerable to the slow but inevitable transformations of decay — kind of like us.

Maybe that explains why so many people feel visceral connections to their bicycles; they remind us of stories, happy times, and rust-free days. Re-cycle art celebrates the pleasure we get from our bicycles — even when they can’t be ridden any more.