A fresh coat of paint has come to Linfield’s Bike Co-Op along with a new manager. Senior and current manager of the co-op Katherine Takaoka has been with the co-op since it first opened in fall of 2009.

Before the Bike Co-Op was established, the space was just storage, starting off as a student-run initiative that was sponsored by outside funding through the Oregon Campus Compact Grant. In the spring of 2010, Takaoka joined forces with Adjunct Professor of Art Totem Shriver’s studio practices class to use the mural on the Bike Co-op as their collaborative project.
Shriver led a First CLAS group in painting the front of the Bike Co-op. Currently, the co-op is painted all white with a pastel geometric pattern inspired by the artist Sol LeWitt who specializes in wall drawings and murals.
Since the windstorm hit the Bike Co-op with a lot of damages including cracking one of the windows, local sign painter Mitch Horning hand-painted the new Bike Co-op sign and this inspired the most recent makeover for the co-op. Horning also painted windows for other local business on Third Street such as Community Plate.
Horning is eager to do other painting jobs on campus such as the Game Room and CIC. The current mural is also being done by Shriver’s art class and is expected to be finished by the end of the current semester.
With this project finishing up, the Bike Co-op has hired a new manager in order to continue helping students have access to sustainable transportation. Freshman Wyatt Lay was chosen because of his enthusiasm and his prior experience with bike repair, according to Takaoka. Within the upcoming year, the Bike Co-op aspires to become paperless by having all of their forms available online, making more bikes and bike locks available and purchasing through local retailers like Tommy’s Bike Shop on Third Street.
“It’s a student-run space with an opportunity for artistic expression,” Takaoka said. “We enjoy using local resources to create the involvement for sustainability projects.”