Metro Nashville Public Art: bike racks

As a department of Metro Nashville Government, the Metropolitan Nashville Arts Commission (MNAC) uses public money to fund public art. The artist-designed bike racks series combine form and function by providing a visually interesting alternative to an object of necessity.

The Metro Arts website currently shows there are seven of these bike racks around Nashville. Many cities and urban areas are making an effort to encourage walking, biking, and the use of mass transit as a way to save energy and protect the environment, and Nashville is no different. For this project, MNAC partnered with Metro Public Works and the Mayor's Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. This is a very concrete example of art interacting with and responding to public policy and social movements.

The bike rack sculpture I like the most is Microphone Rack. It was created by Franne Lee, Keith Harmon, and Mac Hill, and is installed at the northeast corner of Demonbruen Street and Music Row. The microphone looks almost alive, with the pedestal for its feet and the head of the microphone as a bowed head - the machine as living object reminds me of the jumping and squeaking lamps used in Pixar shorts. Humans are hard-wired to see eyes, faces, and other human-like features in shadows and objects; by making the microphone anthropomorphic, the designers added an additional layer of interest to the piece.

This to me is a perfect kind of public art - if we have to look at objects anyway, they might as well be visually pleasing; extra points are awarded in my book for quirky.