Work of Art Bike = Bike of Artwork

[DJR]

Work of Art Bike = Bike of Artwork
 

(A truly one-of-a-kind single speed for David)
 

Picture, in your minds’ eye, the coolest most artsy, most off beat, city on earth. If you don’t have Barcelona high up on your short list, then let me point you in that direction. It is a place where uniqueness, eccentricity, sometimes weirdness, blossomed for many hundreds of years, where it was encouraged, not just tolerated. It gave us some of the most amazing modern artists and architects of the last hundred years. If you can connect names like Picasso, Gaudi, Dali and Miro in one sentence, one place, one time, Barcelona will the city!

 

We explored the narrow medieval alleyways, Las Ramblas and the Beachfront on our one ton rented monsters and were jealous of the sleek and nimble single speeds that roamed the streets around us! I think that was when David first started dreaming of building a one-of-a-kind bike artwork!

 

But not all bike builds go the way you anticipate, sometimes they find their own way, winding this way and that through your life and your own reality, eventually to result in a bike that is right for the place, the time and for its owner. I was about to learn that! Again!

Edited June 4, 2020 by DJR

[Captain Fastbastard Mayhem]

oooooh, another one of DJR's projects!

 

Subbed. 

[DJR]

About a year after our return from Barcelona, David asked me to help find all the right parts for a single speed build. He wanted something cool as a commuter between home and the University of Cape Town where he was studying. We launched the search for the frame with a visit to Woodstock Cycle Works. After a couple of hours of digging we picked a frame.

 

That was where things got truly interesting, because it is an old no-name steel frame, but everything, from the elegant lines, Reynolds 531 tubeset, Bianchi lugs, Campagnolo dropouts, Italian thread bottom bracket, chromed chain- and seat stays, beautifully detailed sloping-shoulder chromed fork, internal cable routing, the totally unique seat post clamp, screamed superior quality! What on earth could it be? The research started immediately after we put the money down, but it got us nowhere. The internet and the classic bike forums were equally stumped. All agreed that it was most likely made in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Most agreed that it was likely Italian, because of the BB, but noting that Reynolds tubing was unusual for Italian makers, who would more likely have used Columbus tubes. Some said that the very unique type of seat post clamp was used more in France than anywhere else. Nobody managed to come up with even a guess as to who the maker was. It has no markings other than a serial number stamped under the bottom bracket. In the end we decided that it was probably made by a continental artisan builder, possibly Italian, French or Belgian, who produced a limited number of frames and had since disappeared.

 

How on earth it ended up at the southernmost tip of Africa, is as much of a mystery as its origins. It was easy to imagine it as a one of a kind frame, destined to become a one of a kind single speed bike for a one of a kind rider.

Edited June 4, 2020 by DJR

[Captain Fastbastard Mayhem]

Oh my... this is gonna be special. 

[DJR]

Behind Davids’ back, I went to Rook Cycles in Cape Town and bought him a new black deep section wheelset on Novatec wide flange hubs for his 20th birthday. Now that would no longer have to come out of our budget, being a birthday present and all! Sneaky move of mine, don’t you think? They are of good quality without breaking the bank and the rear hub is a flip-flop one with a fixed gear on one side and a freewheel on the other. I decided that the all blacked out deep section wheels needed a bit of bling and I tackled the braking surfaces with sanding blocks of various grit, removed the paint and smoothed them to a satin finish. Thickslick urban tyres, with all its’ logos removed, and tyre liners to increase puncture resistance, completed the wheelset.

 

With a frame and wheels in the bag, the search for the rest of the components started. I spent another whole delightful morning digging through the masses of spares at the cathedral of cycling that is Woodstock Cycle Works, in search of more bits and pieces. Yes, just like a little boy on a treasure hunt! At the end of it I had a Sakae Randnner Road Champion set of handlebars, with a very unusual and attractive bend! It is shaped like an early toned down version of modern gravelbike bars. I had a Cinelli quill stem from a previous build that worked well with the bars. I further found a Campy Daytona crankset, new brake levers and a seat post to fit the frame. In the Bikehub classifieds I found Shimano RS100 brake callipers and a new 42 tooth Campy chainring. Postnet worked like magic, bringing some parts from Bloemfontein and others from Johannesburg. The funky Cinelli bar and plugs and blue Cinelli bartape came from Rook Cycles, I had a good Fizik Antares saddle lying around and we got some black calfskin leather from Woodheads to re-cover it with.

[DJR]

You are sure to notice that I use Shimano and Campagnolo in the same sentence and that we planned to mix the two into this build as well! The parts-mix made for quite a colourful kaleidoscope …… But wait, suppress your horror, there is method to my madness, even the gods of bike building will understand!

 

It was decided to polish everything to a mirror shine! That meant that all logos would be removed and that the only things we had to think about were the shape, function and look of the parts. If the plan came together as hoped, then it would be a unique bike built on an unknown, unidentified frame with no name components. Except for the D added to the front of the stem with a steady hand and a dental drill. Modified and polished shifter cable guides would hide the bosses on the down tube.

[DJR]

With all the components collected, it became imperative to settle the art design of what we set out to build as a one-of-a-kind bicycle work of art! With David mostly missing in action (studying), it was left to me to think, investigate and come up with something that would be unique and have a specific connection with him. As if I needed an excuse! I dug up my diary, searched the photographs of our many adventures, hit the internet hard, Googled and built up a file full of ideas. Slowly the picture (pun intended) became clearer and I decided to try and find an iconic artist and perhaps an artwork that I knew the extremely creative David loved, and then use that as the inspiration for the bike.

 

I narrowed it down to surreal and abstract artworks that I thought could look great on a bike frame. I lined up works by Kandinski, Jackson Pollock, Miro, Picasso, Salvador Dali, and a few more that I thought could work. I even looked into adding local South African flavour and considered some of the more abstract Pierneef works.

 

The place where all this intersected, where the two of us, bicycles and art came together the best by far, was Barcelona! I narrowed it down to artists we saw together while there: That left Picasso, Dali and Miro! Next, still thinking of our time in Barcelona, I simply had to add the genius of Antonio Gaudi, especially since David is studying architecture, and the list started growing again. Gaudi incorporated the most amazing mosaics in his outlandish artistic buildings and David was totally bowled over by him. I had to start trimming the all too long list of possibles again.

 

Ps. Here I apologize for not posting pictures of the artists I considered, purely out of copyright considerations. But feel free to Goodle the names.

Edited June 4, 2020 by DJR

[DJR]

In the end I decided to use Joan Miro, Spanish Catalan abstract and surreal artist, as inspiration for Davids’ bike! David and I spent a wonderful time in the Barcelona Miro museum looking at his paintings. The Fundacion Joan Miro was built specially by architect guru Josep Lius Sert, lifelong friend of Miro, to house his artworks. It overlooks the magical city of modern art and architecture, where Miro was born, from its magnificent setting on Montjuic, where he is buried. In itself, the building is a modernist sculpture and designed to exhibit Miros’ often massive works very well. Up to that point I was no great Miro admirer. Of the surrealist painters, I favoured another Spaniard, Salvador Dali. I was in for an education! David pointed out symbolism and deeper meanings that I have missed altogether. In all the seemingly intricate chaos of one work, he highlighted the simple meaning. In the extreme simplicity of another, he showed me a thousand words of philosophy! I discovered how accurately Miro planned and executed his works, sometimes over years, and how some motifs and symbols kept on reappearing in the works, over many decades. David would sometimes just sit quietly and admire a certain painting for a while. That was the day I realized that he had become my superior as far as knowledge and understanding of art is concerned! Much like the first time I could no longer keep up with him cycling up our favourite ride, Chapmans Peak. What a fantastic discovery! Searching the internet revealed no Miro inspired art bikes, so this would truly be a one of a kind! Miro it had to be, without a doubt!

 

Ps. Note that I have permission from the Fundacio Miro to post these images of his works.

 

Edit 02/07/2020 - Apologies, two images of original Miro paintings (Blue 2 and Spanish Dancer) removed as per copyright agreement. If you want to see what they look like, you 'll have to Google.

Edited July 2, 2020 by DJR

[DJR]

The subject for Davids’ final matric artwork two years ago was “Blue”. He did a self-portrait reduction woodcut in 12 different colours of blue for which he scored a cool 100%! He’s the only one in our household with blue eyes, so it was quite clear that blue should be the dominant colour of the artwork. Blue is the colour of the sky and sea, of Cape Town where we live and where he was born. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence and truth. All of that sounds very much like David.

 

[DJR]

I looked at all the Miro works where blue dominated and was surprized that there were so many. It must have held a special meaning for him too. Miró said that this rich dark blue was a symbol of a world of dreams, an unconscious state where the mind flowed clearly. It was the colour of the surreal, of night, the only place where dreams could exist in their rawest state, untouched by conscious thought. Dreams of the creative mind! Could he have been talking about David? Several of his best known works are blue: “Spanish Dancer”, “Blue Star” and perhaps the best known one titled “Blue 2”. (See  2 posts above)

 

In the end we decided to use one of the “Constellation” series as inspiration. The painting itself was done in 1940 and is titled  “People at Night, Guided by the Phosphorescent trails of snails”! The Constellation series of paintings were all done during the Second World War and were inspired by night time black-outs when the night sky, so easily missed in modern life, suddenly regained prominence. (Our own load-shedding and blacked out nights had the same effect.) Miro first fled Normandy, then Spain, to live on Palma before returning to Barcelona after the war. His Constellations paintings traveled with him and were first exhibited in 1954 in New York.

 

Ps. I have permission from the Fundacio Miro to post this image. 

 

Edit 02/07/2020 - Apologies, I had to remove this image as per my copyright agreement with the Miro Foundation. Feel free to Google if you are interested.

Edited July 30, 2020 by DJR

[DJR]

Since the bicycle frame is a no-name one, I had the freedom to design a name for it, but I didn’t want it to be too obvious or in poor taste, so I started searching for ideas. Alternative alphabets? Morse code came up and immediately made sense! It is an almost universal language and definitely old school, much like the classic steel frame! Being a binary language, like zeros and ones, Morse code is also kin to the latest computer languages. Some of Miros paintings, Blue 2 (see3 posts above) particularly, have strong dots and dashes motifs! A Morse code name could become part of the artwork and only those in the know would be able to read it.

 

I crossed fingers that paint magician, Jared Mahaffey from the Bicycle Maintenance Company, would be able to pull it off in reality and I went to talk to him about stripping and painting the frame, full well knowing that what I had in mind was going be near impossible and likely to cost a pretty penny! I simply could not think of anyone else who could pull this plan off and even then I had my doubts! Jareds’ wife, Mel, was in charge of translating my ideas into a workable design. She added a good few very bright ideas like not just putting Davids’ name in Morse Code somewhere in the design, but to add my own as well. She also moved the names to the seat stays rather than on the down tube where it would have distracted from the artwork. Mel made sure that the overall design was in balance, unmistakable and totally unique. Another long wait started, but there is no way to rush the creative process or the artist – as proven so many times over by David and Miro himself!

[DJR]

By this time I also found a perfect excuse to throw the original budget out of the window. (To be completely honest, the budget got canned a good while ago, but an excuse was still handy.) The project dragged on for so long, we were now a bit over a year into it, and David was well on his way to his 21st birthday. Since he had no idea of the art design, I decided to make it a surprise for his big birthday! Death to budgets! Death to mediocrity! Death to boredom and blandness!

 

Just before Christmas Jared had the paintwork completed. All doubts vanished the second I laid eyes on the end result of the paintwork. It was exactly the right blue, the detail was painstakingly precise, the background was somewhat mottled like it would have been on a canvas, the images were unmistakably Miro, the layout and the relationship of the parts to each other just worked out perfectly. Another touch which made a difference was the satin / matt finish Jared chose. It makes the effect much more like a canvas and less like a piece of shiny spray paint. Every part of the paint was flawless and so smooth that I could not help but to keep running my fingertips over it. The amount of masking, painting, sanding, fine brushwork, over and over, must have been huge. No vinyl transfers were used, everything was painted with miniature airbrushing and by hand. The design wraps around the frame and the left and the right are not the same. One has to walk around the bike and view it from above and below to see the whole picture. From afar it is a beautifully elegant blue bicycle, from up close, it becomes a work of art!

[MORNE]

snip

FARK....

so nice.

(this strip tease is excruciating btw) 

[Captain Fastbastard Mayhem]

????

[DJR]

More: Every square inch has a surprise. Every bit unique. The difficulty is to decide which pictures to post and which to leave out! 

 

Jareds' trade mark is discreetly hidden on the inside of a wheel stay.

[DJR]

Meanwhile, David had no idea that the paint was done and I decided to keep it like that. I wrapped the frame securely in bubble wrap and hid it where he would never stumble on it. Next came Christmas and New Year with all its festivities, things to do and places to go, the project paused into 2020, well into its’ second year.

 

Next I booked a date with Nils Hansen at Woodstock Cycle Works to put everything together and I connived with Daniel to take his older brother there for a beer or two while the bike is born, or rather, re-born into its new life! Everything was in place for the surprize build a few days before Davids’ 21st birthday. Daniel decided that he also did not want to see the frame beforehand, keeping the surprise to share with his brother. All I asked was that he send me a few pictures to get me through my long day at work. When David first saw the frame, and the colour, he reminded me that his very first bicycle, when he was about four, was named “Mr Blue” and that he has had a pretty solid line of blue bikes ever since.

 

Edited June 4, 2020 by DJR