A rainbow for Rice

By Josh Rutenberg     4/8/10 7:00pm

Students put a new spin on diversity at Rice during spring recess by spray-painting bicycles for ColorCycle!, a large-scale, student-initiated, student-run art project in celebration of Rice's continuing commitment to culture and innovation. Funded by an Envision Grant, the project aimed to reclaim abandon bicycles to add a vibrant installation on campus.Project Director Sam Jacobson said 64 students assembled at noon last Saturday in the academic quadrangle to spray-paint 85 reclaimed bicycles. Volunteer Coordinator Alex Tseng said the bicycles would be distributed among 236 bicycle racks located across campus.

Jacobson, a Baker College senior, applied for and received an Envision Grant for $1,618 from Leadership Rice to help fund the event. He said ColorCycle! used the money to purchase project materials such as spray paint and plastic sheets, food for volunteers and also to rent a 24-foot truck to transport bicycles to bicycle racks spanning the entirety of campus.

The idea for ColorCycle! came about when Scott Chamberlain, a member of the Student Association Bike Safety Committee and biology graduate student, sent an e-mail to students in the School of Architecture about collaborating on a bicycle art project. Jacobson, an architecture major, worked with Seanna Walsh, an architecture graduate student, to develop ideas for Chamberlain's project.

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From June to August, Jacobson located, photographed and recorded the position of every bicycle rack on campus and used a geographic information system to map the locations and divide them into different sections of the color spectrum.

Jacobson said he and Walsh originally planned to paint the bicycle racks instead of the bicycles. Working with Facilities, Engineering and Planning to determine the logistics of the project, Jacobson painted blue a test bicycle rack near Autry Court, which has remained painted for display.

However, the medium changed to bicycles after Jacobson and his partners realized they would not have enough volunteers. Jacobson said removing bicycles from every rack would have been too time- and labor-intensive, and university requirements would have insisted ColorCycle! eventually remove the paint anyway.

"We were confident in our ability to find volunteers," Jacobson said about initially painting the bicycle racks. "We were not confident in our ability to remove the paint . so we voted to change media."

Jacobson said ColorCycle! received the reclaimed bicycles from the Rice University Police Department, the University of Houston and the surrounding community, for free.

Tseng, a Wiess College senior, said ColorCycle! affirmed President David Leebron's Vision for the Second Century by bringing the campus together as a whole community.

"The most important thing about getting volunteers is we wanted the volunteers to come from everywhere and represent the diversity of campus," Tseng said.

The painted bicycles spanned the color spectrum, with the hue gradually changing colors from the west side to the east side of campus.

"There's a very subtle commentary," Jacobson said. "Rice prides itself on its diversity . but on a day-to-day basis, we don't really experience that diversity. You live in a certain place with certain people, you take classes with the same group of people . I wanted to do something that brought all these people together."

The team reshot each bicycle rack for comparison to identify where abandoned bicycles were located. Using the information obtained from the photos, the ColorCycle! team coordinated with RUPD Captain Phil Hassell to determine which bicycles would be reclaimed for the project.

Jacobson said although RUPD usually disposes of bicycles that are unclaimed after 60 days, the process of getting rid of the bicycles can be slow.

"Usually, the [abandoned] bikes sit for a long time, so they were happy to let us take them off their hands," Jacobson said.

To recruit volunteers for the event, Tseng said he and others sent e-mails to clubs and college presidents, set up Facebook and Twitter pages and spread the event through word of mouth. The ColorCycle! Organizational Management Group first asked clubs for their support of the project and later recruited volunteers from the clubs.

Baker College freshman Zechariah Lau said he attended the event because it sounded like fun.

"I think it's cool that people from around campus can come together and recycle these bikes nobody wants anymore and have a good time," Lau said.

Lovett College junior Joey Yang came to the event for the opportunity to tag a bicycle.

"It sounded like a lot of fun," Yang said. "It's fun to come out here and tag something, to make it your own."

Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman noticed the event while taking a morning walk around campus.

"It's really fun to watch [the event] take shape here in real time," Forman said. "We're looking forward to seeing the bikes spread around campus. It's beautiful."

Once the bicycles had been painted, they were attached to the racks using zip-ties to recreate the appearance of an unclaimed bicycle. Volunteer painters placed stickers on the bicycles with their name and an identification tag, along with a Web site address. Individuals who come into possession of the bicycles are encouraged to post photos of the bicycles' journeys on www.ricewhatsyourcolor.com, Jacobson said.

Jacobson said the ColorCycle! team also designed the project with environmental concerns in mind. He said the team hopes people who take the bicycles will also fix them up and ride them, allowing the bicycles to be recycled, rather than being thrown away like "garbage."

By Sunday, most of the bicycles had been relocated from their original location, Jacobson said.

"The project was always intended to be temporary. It was always intended to have massive volunteer participation and to be more of an event than an installation," Jacobson said.

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