Two shows in San Luis Obispo help celebrate National Bike Month with bicycle-themed art

Bicycle-inspired art is decorating select San Luis Obispo coffeehouse walls throughout May.

The art, which ranges from the classic to the whimsical, is part of this year’s celebration of National Bike Month, sponsored nationally by the League of American Bicyclists and locally by SLO Regional Ride Share.

Bike Month encourages travelers to recognize cycling as a viable mode of transportation. The cycle-centric art on display in San Luis Obispo has a little fun with the topic.

Linnaea’s Café owner Marianne Orme is both an artist and cyclist, so she immediately accepted Ride Share’s invitation to host a group show.

Five of Orme’s pieces are featured in the show. Her artworks are intended to provoke laughter.

“For this show, as Iwas pondering what to create,” Orme said. “My husband was giving our bikes a much-needed tune-up, and I saw the saddles as a canvas and immediately envisioned a face in one of the saddles.”

That saddle, which Orme painted green, became “Nanu Nanu.” (The title is a nod to Robin Williams’ catch-phrase on the TV show “Mork & Mindy.”) “Bite Me,” features a giant, toothy grin.

“How could I not paint just a big mouth where someone sits?” she joked.

Other artists featured in Linnaea’s show include Cynthia Meyer, Amy McKay, Grace Morgan and Bret Brown. Morgan’s watercolor painting, “Where Everyone Knows Your Bike,” shows Linnaea’s Café on Garden Street with a string of bicycles hooked onto the bike stand in front.

“I mostly wanted to convey the comfortable feel of riding your bi cycle downtown and seeing your friends’ bikes, and other familiar bikes, at Linnaea’s,” Morgan said.

McKay, whose painting “SLO Life” portrays a red-sneakered, pedaling foot, described a similar motivation.

“It’s the Saturday morning ride to town for breakfast in atown where you can probably get there faster on your bike,” McKay said. “It’s the kind of place where you can wear your Chuck Taylors to a work meeting and then to the corner market for Friday afternoon beers.”

In another section of town, at The Nautical Bean Coffee House & Bistro, sculptor Bill Mulder is showing 11 sculptures constructed from bicycle parts.

One of the pieces in the show, “Bike Boob,” is a bicycle wheel painted pink and blue. If sold, proceeds from the sculpture will support Cancer Support Community, based in Paso Robles and serving the Central Coast.

Another of Mulder’s sculptures, “Caution: Goat Head,” is inspired by the tire-popping goathead thorn. Cut handlebars become intimidating horns sitting above a thin seat that rests against a spiked chain ring. “I do bike art sculpture all the time, not just for May,” Mulder said. “I take discarded bikes and weld them. Basically, I recycle the parts. I’m a fanatic cyclist; anything on two wheels, I’ll ride. I’m also an artist, and like to combine my passions.”

This story was originally published May 18, 2015 at 8:29 AM.