Some crafters are inspired by cityscapes, others by nature. For 20-year-old Natan Lawson, the inspiration to mosaic his bike came while cleaning out his basement in Baltimore, Md. Why throw away old mirrors, tiles, china, beads, and even a drawer knob when you can use them to gussy up a stale bike?
Lawson admits he started off a little dubious, wondering if a bike was the right kind of canvas. “I was skeptical that it would work, so I asked a friend who knows more about bikes than me. He said it was a bad idea but I could probably get away with it. I started working on it the next day,” he says.
Even with seven years of mosaic experience under his belt, Lawson came across a few challenges. For one thing, he found it important to make his mosaic pieces smaller than he’d anticipated — the larger pieces might stick at first, but would snap off later when he was working on another part of the bike. Also, it was the first time he’d ever used epoxy, so it took a little trial and error before mastering the epoxy mix ratio.
“A number of sections I glued down with incorrect proportions just fell off a week later,” he explains.
And then there was the grout, which added 8 pounds to the bike (the mosaic pieces added another pound), and took up one month of this two-month-long project. For anyone who’d like to make their own version, Lawson suggests taking the bike apart first (which he didn’t do) to avoid the hardship of grouting in difficult-to-reach places.
To protect his work, Lawson used West System’s 105 epoxy resin and 206 hardener, and a urethane varnish. “Beware, though — that protective coat changed the color of my grout from a bright red to a dark red.”
Even though the vibrant bike is now heavier than before, Lawson says it didn’t hurt his performance while touring from Vermont to Baltimore last August. He especially enjoyed parking the bike outside restaurants where, from a window inside, he could observe people approaching it, and touching it, in awe. “That was fun to watch.” —Carla Sinclair
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