As part of their support of the Eastside Culture Crawl the Mobi bike company runs a competition for designs to grace their ‘art bikes’ for the year. For the second year in a row I was lucky enough to be one of five artists selected to have my design featured on five bikes (there are five bikes for each artist) around the city.

This year’s design included the same silhouetted buildings representing various Vancouver landmarks that I used for my Vancouver Lightbox installation however this time they featured in white against a background of the water and mountains that are visible from the downtown waterfront. My inspiration as always came from the city and its surrounds - I always strive to include only buildings that are within the ‘zone’ that the Mobi bikes are located, to give people inspiration on where they might like to explore.

I use what I call a ‘fake paper’ (or fakeper) technique for these designs - I have a series of images of real paper that has been scanned that I used to fill the shapes that I would usually use as cut files. Using this digital format gives me flexbilility in the size and shape of the final piece so I can custom fit it to the design of the bike and ensure it’s a good resolution for reproduction.

Keep an eye for the art bikes around the city - they’re available all year!