In Lubbock, the fabrication and exhibition of lowrider bikes function as a means toward self-presentation, increased social mobility, and family unity. Starting with discussions about the history, ontology, and fabrication of lowrider bicycles, I analyze my findings through the works of contemporary Chicano/a authors, including Shifra Goldman, Tomas Ybarra-Frausto, Amalia Mesa-Bains, and Marcos Sanchez-Tranquilino, in reference to Chicanismo, pachuquismo, rasquachismo, and issues related to gender and gallery exhibition. Filtered through my positional lens, as a White, middle-class male, artist/educator, this dissertation records my efforts to understand the reasons that lowbikes have previously been dismissed by academe, and the ethno-cultural impetus behind the aesthetic. These public shows inspired ancillary programs in the School of Art at Texas Tech, including outreach at two Lubbock middle schools.
Concurrently, I organized seven lowbike exhibitions at the galleries of Texas Tech University and the Buddy Holly Center, in Lubbock.
As keys to my immersion, I fabricated my own bicycle, The Fourth Rider of the Apocalypse, consecutively joined Tru Riderz and Los Bajitos lowrider car clubs, and competed to the national level. Primarily limiting my sample to a 150-mile radius around Lubbock, Texas, I interviewed enthusiasts and examined their lowbikes to learn fabrication methods and the canon under which they function, as well as nuances of associated lowrider culture. Penland, and Michael Cutler Stone, the absence of material specific to lowrider bikes necessitated close inspection as participant observer. Although there is a wealth of literature related to greater lowrider car culture, chiefly in the works of Brenda Jo Bright, Ben Chappell, Denise Sandoval, Paige R. Abstract In spite of a 40-year history and their expanding popularity, lowrider bicycles have largely remained invisible to academe, perhaps due in part to their marginalization as a Chicano/a paradigm, with a consequential subordination of the aesthetic.
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