Art

by Michael Barry

The house I grew up in was a warm little semi detached in the heart of downtown Toronto. The bookshelves were filled with volumes of cycling books from around the world and the garage packed with bikes.

My Dad, Mike, loves bikes. He has ridden his bike to work 90% of the days he has owned his business. As a toddler, I was carried to school on the top tube of his bike each morning and around in the afternoons on the back of my mom's city bike.

Each time I get back to Toronto, I pedal around town with my wife Dede. We do all our visiting and shopping on bikes. I feel comfortable in the traffic, in my element, on a bike, whereas my sensations are totally different in a car: confinement and stress.

My Dad knows bikes. He is at the shop working on them daily and at home reading about them nightly--always with a cup of tea close at his side.

Every Mariposa he has built has been built with love and care, paying close attention to detail and function. He customizes each order to suit the needs of the individual for whom he is building. He built my first Mariposa when I was five years of age. I raced my friends through Mount Pleasant cemetery on it and along the bike paths in Sunnybrook Park. As I grew, my Dad would outfit me with a bigger bike and continued to race more often through the years. Each bike my Dad made for me was a gift I cherished.

As the years passed and as I grew out of each of my Mariposas, I was progressing in the sport of cycling and had an opportunity to race professionally, which forced me onto other bike brands. It was then that I started to see the Mariposa in a different light.

Growing up, the Greg Curnoe Mariposa bike prints and drawings that hung on the wall in the shop had little meaning to me. They were nice and they were always there. I never thought much about them as they hung there for decades. The Mariposas I had ridden were fantastic bikes and great tools for a racer like me. I loved each one but I always saw them as great bikes.

Now after having distanced myself from the shop and having traveled the World and seen bikes all over I have begun to realize that the Mariposas are not only bikes but also works of art. I realize there is a reason Greg chose to paint the Mariposas and there is a reason those paintings hang on walls and in galleries throughout the world.

Mariposas are art. Each one is unique and each one is built with passion, care, thought and precision. Without a doubt, my Dad has thought about how to improve each bike as he is pedaling to work through the parks each morning. Tom and my Dad both love what they do and that is the reason they are building and creating.

In 2003 my Dad showed up in Girona, Spain at our apartment with a bike built specifically for the trip. He was planning to cross the Pyrenees on his bike: the Raid Pyrenean. The last time he rode the Raid in 1981 he had built a machine that was featured in several magazines--it was the ideal touring bike. For his second journey across the mountains he put together a touring bike for the new century, an updated version of the bike he had built two decades prior. It was sleek, functional, light with flowing lines and shining paint. Impressive.

Our home was a place for bikes and bike riders. My friends would roll by each afternoon after school and have a cup of tea before and after our rides. On the weekends, we would be at the races and back home to the house to look at the latest magazines and books that evening.

My Dad is proud of the races both Dede and I are doing around the world. I am just as proud to tell people to visit his website to see the beautiful bikes he and Tom are creating. They are works of art, worthy of hanging on a wall, as one or two customers have done. Bikes that my friends and teammates have said they would like to ride after retirement.

Michael Barry

Michael races for the T-Mobile Team.
For more from Michael check out his site at http://www.michaelbarry.ca

Michael is also a regular contributor to Pedal magazine and likes to bake sour-dough bread.