***UPDATE: 9/14***
We are very excited to have raised more than $9,000 in less than a week of our campaign. If we can raise $20,000 by the end of the Kickstarter period, we will fully fund every phase of the Bike Bridge project. Thank you for your support!
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The Bike Bridge project is a collaboration with the youth of Oakland, artist Michael Christian, and partner organization The Crucible. The participants, all young women, began the project with classes in welding and art-bicycle creation, generously hosted by The Crucible. The program culminates in the collaborative creation of a large-scale sculpture made of reclaimed bicycle parts and other reclaimed materials, led by Christian.
Twelve young women, representing seven different high schools in East and West Oakland, were selected to participate in the project. They completed courses in MIG welding and Art-Bicycle Making at The Crucible, yielding impressively inventive and refined art-bike creations. In class, these young women learned the skills needed to help construct a large-scale sculpture.
In the second phase of the project, artist Christian worked with The Crucible’s instructors and the youth participants to design a ”skeleton” structure that was then embellished by the youths. These embellishments are made of reclaimed bicycle parts, connecting with “green,” urban bike culture and tapping into the exciting, creative buzz around “art” bikes.
The Bike Bridge sculpture will be the focal point of a new art park on Telegraph Avenue, adjacent to the newly renovated Fox Theater. The park will soon feature other exhibitions of large-scale art by Oakland and other local artists. This park is located in the hub of a quickly emerging art and nightlife scene, drawing thousands of visitors each weekend, massive crowds for the monthly Art Murmur and thousands more for shows at the Fox.
A modest, but prestigious, NEA grant of $10,000 set the Bike Bridge project in motion, but the project still needs more funding before it can be shared with the rest of the world. We need your help to meet the project’s overall budget of $60,000 ($20,000 remains to be raised). Help us share this artwork with the greater public, so that all may appreciate and celebrate the achievement of these talented young women.
Before you do anything else, please take a moment to donate now. These young artists deserve this magnitude of recognition!
Read more about the Bike Bridge: http://blackrockarts.org/projects/civic-arts/the-bike-bridge
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