Trek and LIVESTRONG will auction the Shepard Fairey-designed Madone 6.9 SSLs RadioShack are now riding at the 2011 Amgen Tour of California to benefit Lance Armstrong's LIVESTRONG Foundation.
Six bikes will be placed in an online auction on LIVESTRONG’s eBay page that will run from Sunday, 22 May through Tuesday, 31 May with the opening bid of each bike set at $8,000.
Each Madone bike will be hand signed by the artist and the rider that rode the bike throughout the Tour of California. Fairey, inspired by the team and racing, selected the red and black colors for the bikes, which feature icons meant to represent the speed, energy and mobility of Team RadioShack.
“With an artist like Shepard — who works in a number of different mediums: canvas, walls and street art — what he can do is come up with a bunch of icons, a color scheme and how things will lay out,” Eric Bjorling, Trek’s director of communications told BikeRadar. “He’s worked with us before on the ‘Stages’ project, so we knew what to expect. He gave us a good idea of how he wanted it to look and it was up to our guys here to actually flow and fit the concept onto the bike.”
The process is very similar to how Trek creates their Project One bikes. The design is made up of both paint and vinyl cut ‘icon’ decals. “Having our paint facilities here on site really helped,” said Bjorling. “Shepard requested a matte finish on this, so we switched the top coat and there you go.”
This is not the first time Trek and Shepard Fairey have collaborated for LIVESTRONG. The artist first lent his talent to Trek for a Madone that Armstrong rode during the 2009 Giro d’Italia. In addition to designing the bike, Fairey was one of the featured contemporary artists during that year’s “Stages,” a global art exhibition.
“We are grateful to Shepard Fairey for lending his talent to the fight against cancer,” said Lance Armstrong, LIVESTRONG founder via press release. “And we are honored to partner with our friends at Trek and Team RadioShack on this special auction for our cause.”
Fairey’s 2009 Giro d’Italia Trek Madone was sold for $110,000 at “It’s About the Bike,” a special auction at Sotheby’s in New York that raised $1.3 million for LIVESTRONG.
“LIVESTRONG is an organization we stand behind strongly,” said Fairey. “Many of the personal lives at Studio Number One have been affected by cancer, and we're proud to see these race bikes ultimately being auctioned off to generate funding for the fight against cancer. It’s an amazing opportunity to have been asked by our friend Lance Armstrong to create a signature aesthetic for Team Radio Shack’s Tour of California run this year.”
“We are looking into working with a few other artists on different projects this year, but nothing we’re ready to talk about right now,” said Bjorling.
