BALTIMORE — Cyclist Barnaby Wickham has collected more than 700 lost hubcaps, mostly on bike rides around Baltimore. They have inspired a quest to turn litter into art, including Christmas wreaths, a giant fish and a large head of Snoopy.
It is a hobby that developed nearly two years ago from his love of cycling and the joy of making something out of the junk he has collected.
“I think it’s sort of the excitement of the hunt, for one thing," Wickham said. "I love to cycle. I love Baltimore. I love to go out in Baltimore, and there’s just enough hubcaps and other things like car grills to be interesting, but not so many that it’s too easy.”
Wickham, 54, says he can't quite explain it, but one day while cycling in early 2024 he decided to bring home a lost hubcap. Since then, he has started stringing hubcaps he comes across to his backpack.
“I keep track of them, and I have a Google map," he said. "I pin locations where I find each of them.”
Others in his community who have taken an interest in his projects let him know when they see hubcaps by the road. Now, Wickham keeps a list of them that he refers to as “hubcaps in the wild.”
He wants to do the collecting himself. That is part of the joy.
Wickham also gets a hand from his wife, Kate, who helps hold materials during construction and offers opinions.
“I’m just support team, and occasionally the cautious person who says, you can’t drive on this road, you can’t bike on this road or whatever. So I’m just more kind of supporting his love of trying new things,” she said.
Baltimore a center of quirky art
It might seem like an odd pastime, but Baltimore has been known to celebrate its quirky side. The city is known for director John Waters, whose offbeat films earned him the moniker of the “Pope of Trash.” Baltimore is also home to the American Visionary Art Museum, which is nationally recognized as a repository for the work of self-taught artists and intuitive art.
Wickham, who works in marketing for a defense technology company, stores his finds in his garage and works in his front yard. He uses expanded metal as a framework, with sheet metal with holes and wiring to hold the sheets in place. He uses zip ties to link the hubcaps on the sheet metal.
“It’s all held together with zip ties," he said. "Hubcaps are filled with slots or holes, and so it’s easy to get a hold of them to hold them in place.”
His works are big. The head of Snoopy is 16 feet (4.9 meters) tall and about 21 feet (6.4 meters) wide.
He picks up hubcaps on his travels
While most of the hubcaps he uses were found in Baltimore, Wickham expands his range when he travels. Visits to see his son at Kent State University have added a few hubcaps with Ohio origins. A business trip to Italy, which included a bike tour in Rome, yielded a find. Wickham had to explain to his guide why he bothered to pick it up.
“And I was like, oh, I collect these. I’m just going to take this back with me. And I showed her a photo of the wreath, and she was like: ‘Oh, OK.’ Whenever anyone hears about it and understands it, they’re onboard," Wickham said.
Wickham donated two Christmas wreaths he made last year, one to the city and another to a nonprofit.
Wickham said the hobby has led to interactions with city residents. On one ride, a man who saw him pick up a hubcap, insistently signaled for him to come over to him. He wanted to let him know there was another hubcap nearby.
“It was clear to him that I was collecting these things, and all he wanted to do was help, to point one out for me. And there’s a lot of that,” Wickham said.
“It starts a lot of conversations, and it’s just something that people love to talk about," he said.
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