The group exhibit Bicycles hangs in the Underground Gallery at the Harrison Center in May and June of 2022. The show features several artists’ works, and I also made pieces for the show. My pieces were an homage to how spinning tires and spokes move and radiate. As an abstract experimental artist, I cling to the way things make me feel and how I can represent those feelings in a new way. I was curious to learn how the other artists approached the theme and what bicycling meant to them. Here is what I discovered.

Kristi Marsh Watson
*Round and round, all through the town*
Mixed media on lumber slab
6” x 6” x 1.5”

The piece from Caleb John Smith explores the bicycle “as a symbol of fantasy and mystery.” Smith remarks that, particularly in cinema, bicycles “often represent channels between our world and another world (think, the levitating bike in ‘E.T.’ or the bands of bicycling kids in ‘It’ or ‘Stranger Things.’)” To Smith, “bicycles mean imagination and freedom which, when combined, can connect us to the Unknown.”

Caleb John Smith
*Contrarian*
photograph
20" x 30"

Pink Cadillac by Yeabsera Tabb was inspired by fellow artist and friend Eleyes Reeves, who also has works exhibited in Bicycles. Reeves is an inspiration for Tabb. “Her creativity, her energy, her willingness to show up and uplift others. Biking is an everyday part of Miss Eleyes’s life. She bikes everywhere rain or shine.”

Yeabsera Tabb
*Pink Cadillac*
charcoal, colored pencil, paper
17" x 23"

The large-scale painting Dream Cycle began as an outlet for the vivid dreams artist Josh Rush was experiencing during the pandemic. “For an entire moon cycle, I painted them together on this 4-foot square canvas. At first, it was fun to see how characters from different dreams interacted, and soon a story emerged.” As he painted, Rush quickly ran out of room to house these vivid dreams in a single piece, “the canvas became too busy and overwhelming to look at. I struggled to find a way to resolve the situation I had created. Along came Bike Party with such a brilliant reference photo. Inspired again, I began tucking the dream characters in with the soft folds of this old familiar blanket as though it were awake and painting itself. My chaotic composition calmed down, lulled by the motion and cadence of my pedaling brush strokes, my eyes allowed to rest. Fragments of dreams remain in the painting like bits of abstract information and now tell their story among a crowd of bicycle riders all dreaming in the same direction.”

Josh Rush
*Dream Cycle*
oil on canvas
48" x 48"

The sculptures Owens + Crawley made for the bike show are a celebration of the perspective you gain from the seat of a bicycle. In Owen’s words, biking is “not slow like walking. It’s not too fast like in a car. Biking for me is a chance to see the world at a different pace and, therefore, through a different lens.”

Quincy Owens
*Whirly Gig*
steel, acrylic, bike spokes

Artist Tom Day explains his piece Parts “when creating this piece, my goal was to use parts of a bicycle to portray the self-detachment and disarray I experienced during the duration of the pandemic. I perceived myself as a mirrored version of a past self, separated from who I truly knew I was. I felt lost. I felt alone. I felt isolated. Although I don’t cycle, art has always been a way of escape for me. Without it, I know I would spiral.”

Tom Day
*Parts*
digital, pastel on canvas
18" x 24"

Kipp Normand’s piece was inspired by motion and photography. “When I first learned to print cyanotype photographs, I was really interested in printing from 19th-century images, particularly those of motion study photographers like Eadweard Muybridge and Charles Marey. My piece for the bike show is one of my practice images using a Charles Marey negative.”

Johnny McKee, curator of The Underground Gallery, spoke about his pieces in the show, saying “my work is a stencil cut from an image of an acrobat riding a bicycle across a high wire or tight rope. My uncle Jim Mckee was the first person to do this act in the Peru Amateur Circus in Peru, Indiana. This series is sort of a nod to him and his love for bicycles.”

Johnny McKee
*Highwire*
acrylic on paper
20” x 20”

Bicycles will be on display throughout the months of May and June in the Harrison Center Underground Gallery. See it in person or check out our online gallery.