Upcycling Tires in Pont-Aven

A little over a year ago, I proposed a recycled tire project to the Town of Pont-Aven.  Its my honor to inform you, I received an official letter, dated August 11, 2023, from the Pont-Aven Mayor granting permission for the installation site and to begin fundraising!

Wait, what?

For context, the town has taken on a massive redevelopment project rich with debate and different opinions on success or even value.

In this massive complex of 30,000m2 of abandoned factory, there exists, of all things, an abandoned go-cart racecourse, made up of, you guessed it, old tires.

So, up-cycled tires?

Up-cycling, or Recycling tires is a very difficult subject.  First off, tires, as the subject stands today, make up  28 percent of microplastic pollution found in the open ocean, and that is just run off from their use on our roads.  There have been efforts of grinding up tires and using them in for sidewalks or even paving, however, this too, presents plastic pollution problems.  A far too great a number are merely burned or buried.  Many individuals have made successful use of them as eco-houses, and while admirable, doesn’t take into consideration the scale of used tires that exist in the world.  You can read about my other plastic pollution projects here.

So what’s this project?

This project is about upcyclig tires, and increasing public awareness of this massive environmental problem.  I’ve been wanting to work with tires for my whole career.  I find the subject to be particularly fascinating as conventional tires are everywhere and truly the elephant in the room.  I even made a proposal for the Clinton Library in Arkansas but one of the funders dropped out.  The first image was my first draft, then later, as you can see in the second image I modified the design significantly.

 

 

A tire project in Pont-Aven,

With the project here in Pont Aven, I wasn’t quite happy with the ideas that I had before about tire sculpture.  I wanted to change my thinking.

I wanted to limit the amount of material manipulation in order to limit the amount of fabrication pollution.  So this meant, no cutting, and no major processing.  I also wanted to add a community participation element.

Et voilà, the project was born.   Below are some schematic images of the project.

The Project, Ça Roule, will be financed, built, and designed by me, I’ll be announcing a crowdfunding campaign soon.  Old tires from the factory will be sourced to make the sculpture.  It will be a single spiral responding to the corridor of street, river, and the rich local history,particularly that of traditional breton lace making.

Community tires?

The community element will be twofold.  One, I’ll be inviting the community to contribute to the building of the project financially and logistically; but secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the community will be invited to garden inside the tires.   Local plants, moss, ferns, etc, low maintenance, will be encouraged to grow on the insides of the tires, with drainage of course.

As the town is developing the space around the sculpture, the project needs to be sensitive to parking needs in a tourist based economy.   This means I had to think a lot about accommodating the circulation of buses.  Turns out there’s a lot of regulation already out there.

That being said, when I made my most recent proposal to the Pont-Aven Cultural Commission, they gave me a green light to push forward, and were thankful for the visuals including the buses.  Below are some more renders of the project, at this point we are not including the plants in the renders to leave some surprise for the final installation.

I’ll update this post as the up-cycled tire project advances.  I’m delighted to tell you that I’ve created a Kiss Kiss Bank Bank crowdfunding page for the community to contribute and participate in this project, follow the link, and choose your support.  For those who wish to contribute in USD, I’ve created a tandem campaign on PayPal, here.

 

Thanks for all the support and good luck out there!  We got this!