Bike Racks

Functional Civic Artworks For The Grand Traverse Region: An Idea

Traverse City and the surrounding communities across northern Michigan are incredibly invested in biking. Along with innumerable mountain biking trails, paved paths like the Heritage Trail, Betsie Valley Trail, Leelanau Trail, TART, and Little Traverse Wheelway connect towns while offering prime settings for enjoying the local scenery.

The area's citizens and local governments are equally supportive of the arts and are home to an abundance of creative individuals and philanthropists.

With those considerations in place, I believe a project involving bike racks as functional works of art might come to fruition, elevating the often mundane structures into something representative of the region's industry, environment and culture.

This idea crossed my mind after reading David Byrne's excellent book, How Music Works. Digging further into his background I stumbled across his collaborative bike rack installations in New York City (examples here) and thought, "Why not have something similar in Traverse City?"

Of course this would require the efforts of metal workers, artists, community input, leaders and sponsors—but I think it would be a worthwhile project.

I've sketched out some ideas below. Other concepts might include bears, trees, waterfowl, fox, the lakes, people, structures, etc.

Does anyone else feel like making this a reality?