Boise Weekly Cover Art

Artist Statement: Thank goodness for simple pleasures.

One of my found object pieces was chosen for the week of July 4th cover. Originally it was submitted for a bike scavenger hunt the paper was sponsoring but the event was cancelled as mostly everything has been this spring/summer. The title is "Ride On" and is comprised of a wood panel painted red, a piece of corrugated tin with a wooden shape of the US that I decorated with tape and paint, brads and a paper cut out of of Idaho. Surrounding the shape is a bike chain ring with silver beads. I've had 2 people contact me since the cover to offer to donate odds and ends to me. Thank you.

A BMX Assemblage

I got a message the other day asking if I would be interested in creating one of my original bike collages as a gift for a BMX racer in Texas. Of course I said yes.
First I looked up Anna Johnson whom at age 13 has made a name for herself as a National BMX Champion, has her own website and has already been racing for 7 years! I cut out a few pictures of her racing along with logos of her sponsor.
Then I took a bicycle chain and printed it with ink on paper to make a pattern and found other words and ephemera to complete the background.

I found an old rustic frame and used bike parts to make it 3D.

The last step is 2 pour 2 part resin over the whole piece and then lay the pieces in the resin. I changed up the chain to make a heart around the 3 cyclists near the center.

I hope she likes it. This is a thank you gift from her art teacher for being a great art assistant. 

Foothills Ride

 This story starts with my husband sending out an email to all of his friends telling them they should bid on my bike piece that went to the World Bicycle Relief Auction. After I got home from the auction one of his friends called me and asked if the piece sold and I said yes. Next question was could I recreate that piece but with a different color scheme and larger. I said yes and we decided on 3 x 4 feet.

I went up into the foothills on my bike and took this picture of the hills but the sky was grey and our friend wanted a sunset, so I tried to paint one from memory and hated it. 

I went to visit my daughter in Denver and as we were leaving the shopping mall , I saw one of the prettiest sunsets I had ever seen and snapped a photo with my phone and then painted from that layered over the original sky.

The next step was to design the bike. These tubes that I had were too big in relationship to the  "wheels" 

 Oxide Cycles in Boise is a new start up making their own steel bikes. I went to Alan at the shop and asked him what his thoughts were.  

Wow, was I ever lucky. He had some tubing the correct size and said he could weld me a mini bike frame.

I had another friend Innes, build me a custom hand rubbed oiled red oak frame that is a work of art in and of itself. He put it into the frame for me and even made a wood backing to make it more secure.

Here is the finished piece. After screwing the wheels into the masonite backing I poured 2 part resin all over the whole piece and held my breath and it came out great! And now it is off to it's new home tonight. 

My Fifteen Minutes

 This past week I traveled to NYC for the pART World Bicycle Relief event held on 26th st. in the heart of the Chelsea gallery district. We arrived early and were able to see the Chuck Close show just down the street.

Cedar Lake Theatre

I was very impressed with the lighting and display of the show. 

My friend Rebeca Trevino, who had told me about the show won second place for the collage division! She was not able to attend so of course I had to call her immediately and tell her the good news. 

These bicycle figures were made by a Zambian artist. 

some of the other collages:

Mine on the left.  It was fun getting to mingle with the potential buyers and tell them about my piece.

As international a city as New York is, people seemed quite fascinated that Bill and I were from Idaho.  It was as if we were their first visitors from this faraway land.  The marketing director for SCRAM was in fact so intrigued that he called me up on stage to ask about how I ended up at the show.  It was fun sharing how my passion for biking and art came together for this unique event.  So I guess that was my 15 minutes that Andy Warhol predicted.

First Place collage division. It was very hard to get a good photograph of it.  

This was the grand prize winning piece. The artist won a trip to Africa for 2. 

Cuban Music, cocktails and good food.

When we stepped out in the cool evening the sram car was parked out front.
Interesting to see this in the middle of New York City, I'm glad the bikes were still there!

Riding to the Big Apple

I have had two main focuses of activity this summer my art and my bike riding.  They complement each other well as they each encompass different social, mental, and physical challenges and rewards.  While I enjoy this diversity I was also pleased to find some unexpected overlap.  It began when a friend who owns a local shop (Velomech) and the Boise Bicycle Project gifted me some old bike parts for my assemblage.  I put together several bike related pieces for the Sun Valley Bike Festival and other local venues, figuring that they might prove popular in our bike loving town of Boise.  I posted these on my blog and got an encouraging response from a blog buddy Rebeca who I recently visited in the Bay Area.  She told me about an interesting event she had recently entered sponsored by Scram called pART a fundraiser for World Bicycle Relief.  Not wanting to encroach on her space I inquired if the show was still open and Rebeca enthusiastically encouraged me to enter.

The more I researched the event, the more excited I got to be part of it.  The mission statement for the event is;  

(World Bicycle Relief serves people in underdeveloped regions of the world who suffer from lack of access to health care, education, and economic opportunity. With a bicycle you can travel four times farther, carry five times more, and save up to three hours a day in travel time (based on a 10-mile commute). So you can get to a doctor, to school, or to work faster and more safely. Doors closed by distance are now opened, as is the way to a better life. )

In addition to the chance to be part of this worthy project, there will be an auction / fundraiser in November held at a Chelsea theater in NYC that those accepted would be able to attend.

The more I learned about this exciting event the more I wanted to be a part of it, but I was late to the table and afraid I'd missed out.  With nothing to lose I contacted the event coordinators about getting in at the last minute.  To my delight I received this response.

 Pam We have had a great response from artists. I had set this years show at 75 and we have decided to expand to 90 artists. I have three slots open and 10 requests pending. the deadline for accepting the invitation is Aug 1. I looked at your site and think you'd be an artist that could contribute a great deal to the quality and talent I want. So to make it short Your in!!!! I was impressed by your work and of course the bike pieces you are a must so thank you and thank Rebecca. 

With this great news it is off to the races so to speak.

A week later I received a large box containing 100 bicycle parts donated by Sram. 

It was like Christmas opening all the little packages!

In a separate box I received this gessoed hardboard. Though I would be using the backside and not the nice gessoed frontside. 

I started playing around with the pieces seeing what would work. I decided on making a bike. I had to use at least 25 of the 100 bike parts.

Then had to decide on a background. I knew I wanted to use the bicycle chain. I was going to do a collage and use this painting of mine that is on a piece of canvas as the center of the collage. 

First I had to gesso the board as I was using the un gessoed side. 

I then scrapped the first idea and decided to do a whole painting on the board.  Using the idea from the first painting but changing it up a bit. Doing a kind of Van Gough sky. Adding a gate to the fence and a path for riding the bike. Riding in Idaho we have a lot of these wooden gates to open and close to keep the cattle in. 

Next was deciding on the frame color and treatment. I went with a  Silver Sage Metallic that I bought for 50 cents because the package had been damaged. This color goes well will the bike parts.

The bike evolved as I played around with the parts. Some pieces had to be sawed in 1/2 to work. 

After the painting was complete and the glue on the wheel parts and pedal pieces were dry I poured 2 part resin all over the painting and then laid the wheels and pedal into the resin.

After the resin cured for 72 hours, I glued down the rest of the bike , adding a gear and piece of glass for the sun. 

The finishing touch was adding some brand name stickers to the bike...Sram, Rock Shox, Truativ, and Avid, all owned by the same company who is sponsoring this event. I am quite happy with the way the piece turned out.

I hope to be able to make it to the New York City Gallery Show/ pART Project fundraising event which will be held on Thursday, November 29th, 2012 at the Cedar Lake Theater in the West Chelsea Historic District in New York City.