two fell swoops

Something has awoken me from my blogging slumber.  Something that fills me with such passion that I have to post.  It’s not war.  It’s not unemployment.  It’s not even cancer.  It’s this:

I thought these things were temporary and would go away after the Ann Arbor Art Fairs.  A week later, I see they’re still here.  And a little research confirms that they’re here to stay.

The Ann Arbor News asks “Is it art or a bike rack?”  The answer, judging by the rest of their article and its comments, is: neither.  It’s not a bike rack, yet, because cyclists are still confused about whether or not they’re supposed to use the small, decorative installations as such.  And it’s not art because, well…because one hates to call things that are this ugly “art”.  And because things that have to call themselves “art” usually aren’t.

But wait.  The DDA’s page says that local artist Mary Thiefels “volunteered to design” the bike hoops, whose design is supposed “to commemorate the importance of art in the downtown”.  But as one commenter on the News article points out, the design is an exact copy of the Ann Arbor Art Center’s logo.  That makes these bike hoops not art, but - advertising.  For a good case, but - advertising nonetheless.  One wonders where the sign-up sheet was for volunteering to “design” this?  And did the Art Center pay anything to have their logo installed so permanently all around town?

Forget about the sketchiness about the process of these bike hoops’ creation.   What really bothers me about these things is how they remind me of the young “creatives” I know who have moved away because there are no jobs here or because Ann Arbor is too expensive and  has no affordable space downtown for artists to use or reimagine.  Yet our town gives itself this big, public, whimsically-colored pat-on-the-back for being so arts-friendly.

A Tale of Two Cities

One place many of the artists priced out of Ann Arbor have gone to is Ypsilanti.  A city whose DDA also recently installed bike hoops downtown.  What do those bike hoops look like?

As I understand it, local screenprinter VGKids was involved, and the design of these was adapted from the design of existing downtown root guards:

These bike hoops don’t have to have the word ‘Art’ written on them.  They are obviously beautiful, functional objects.  They fit in with (the history of) their surroundings.  Maybe Ann Arbor could learn something from what’s going on in Ypsi.

Bikeracks vs Cancer

The beginning of this post alluded to the last comment on the Ann Abor News post.   After a flurry of comments soon after the story was published, one commenter, ‘greendrink’, effectively ended all discussion (no more comments followed) by saying this:

sad to read all the negative energy going into BIKERACKS when there are so many more important things in life to care about! WAR, unempolyment, cancer,ect…come on people, really!

This kind of vacuous cliche is often used to stop discussion.  The sad thing is that it actually succeeded in making people feel guilty about having a passionate discussion about something they care about.  As if everyone is going to go and redirect their “energy” into curing cancer as soon as they stop worrying about bikeracks.  War, unemployment, and cancer are problems so huge that the average person is overwhelmed when tasked with actually doing something themselves to combat them.  And any suggestion ‘greendrink’ or anyone else might have about what “more important” thing people ’should’ be doing is likely to be something that would take an inordinate amount of their ‘energy’ to do.  People shouldn’t be discouraged from naturally, effortlessly caring about things that may seem insignificant.  To wave three Big Scary Social Issues at people who are engaged in publicly caring about something is completely counterproductive and actually leads to the kind of apathy on which those bigger problems depend.   Small cares, on the other hand, lead into big cares.  So many people who are deeply involved in some Big Social Issue got started because they were pissed off about something small and personal.  And it could be argued that war, unemployment, and even cancer are all just massive accumulations of seemingly insignificant things that went overlooked.

[This post is dedicated to my cousin Julie, who has been using her current battle with cancer to reflect on seemingly insignificant things and write incredibly honest and brave blog posts about them.]