Sculpture bike racks

Tower base and messy outdoor workspace
Details I drew for Al Frega
Bike rack with 3 bikes on a 5' equilateral triangle space. I think it could take 6. The sculpture could be seen above the bikes.
Last year Al Frega introduced me to the wonders of using a pipe bender to make some bike racks. He had gotten a commission to do art on the Chapel Hill Greenways. At my prior job, I had helped design the Bolin Creek Greenway III. I was interested in continuing to work on the greenways and it was great to hang out with Al. He needed construction drawings for the greenway art to satisfy the town. He just builds things at full scale and brings it in as a model. I drew up the details and helped him install (dig in) the art. He designed bike racks, benches with big concrete slabs and 6'-10' towers he called "Sentinels." They were all made with reused materials. The material theme that ran through all the work was a waste brake drum from the Chapel Hill buses. The look great and function well.

This year after the Scrapel Hill competition I bought a pipe bender to use on several projects I had in mind. I was going to build a zeppelin tower for the Durham Beaver Pageant. I wanted the aluminum tower to mount to the sculptural base and the base to have a second life as a bike rack. The tower base was huge, to big for an urban bike rack... maybe for a penny farthing. I scaled down the design and drew it in 3d. I want to put it up around downtown businesses that have a lot of bike traffic. I want to invite local sculptors to mount work on the top of the racks. More to follow.