Last Saturday marked the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM)’s 14th Annual Kinetic Sculpture Race.
Kinetic Sculptures are amphibious, human-powered works of art custom-built for the race which AVAM hosts each May on the shore of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The eight-hour race (officially titled the East Coast Kinetic Sculpture Race Championship) covers 15 miles—mostly on pavement, but not without stretches of mud, sand, and a trip into the Chesapeake Bay.
Kinetic Sculpture Racing traces its roots to Ferndale, California in 1969 when artist Hobart Brown upgraded his son’s tricycle into a five-wheeled pentacycle that was part of a race down Main Street. (Hobart did not win.) Over the decades since, the California race evolved into a three-day, all-terrain Kinetic Grand Championship including treacherous sand dunes, water crossings, and elaborate sculptures and costumes.
If you weren’t able to make it out this year, please enjoy this photo essay from Larry Cohen:
