This April, the work of Oregon’s burgeoning crop of bicycle builders will be on display at the Portland International Airport.
The exhibit will be managed by the Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) and will run for six months (from April through September) and will feature a range of bikes in a 40-foot display in the airport’s E Concourse.
Coordinator of the installation, Austin Ramsland (Sweetpea Bicycles), says he already has submissions from 18 different Oregon builders. Once the submissions are complete, a committee of framebuilders and artists formed by the (RACC) will select the bikes to be displayed.
The RACC manages the airport exhibit space under their artOBJECTS public art program.
According to Ramsland, conversations about this idea began long before the recent North American Handmade Bicycle Show stormed into Portland tallying a record 7,100 attendees over three days.
Ramsland says the exhibit came about through a coordinated effort between the Portland Development Commission (PDC, who has identified bicycles as a target industry), the RACC, and the Port of Portland (who owns and operates the airport), “People at the Port, Jennifer Nolfi at the PDC, and the folks at the RACC are all excited about this exhibit and have supported it all along.”
Back in November, Portland hosted the Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show which was also a raging success.
Ramsland estimates that tens of thousands of people will see this exhibit as they enter Portland, “This is a rare opportunity to have our work shown in a beautiful venue to a lot of people…this is going to be a really cool deal.”
If you build bicycles in Oregon and would like to be a part of this exhibit, send a picture of the bike and a brief description of it to Austin Ramsland at austin [at] sweetpeabicycles [dot] com.
NOTE: Since the exhibit is located behind security gates, only ticketed passengers are able to view it. You cannot ride out to the airport to see it.