I’ve been a faculty member in the School of Art & Art History at the University of Iowa since 1988. I completed an MA in Sculpture in 1983 and a PhD in 1990, focusing my doctoral research on metaphor in the work of Paul Ricœur and its relevance to philosophical approaches to artmaking.

My teaching is grounded in purposeful exploration, an approach that supports learning across skills, concepts, and tools, including welding, modeling, design, fabrication, materials, and aesthetics. In 2010, I founded the University of Iowa’s handmade bicycle curriculum, teaching Fabrication & Design: Hand-Built Bicycle I, II, and III. The program brings together art and engineering majors and has exhibited annually at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show and Bespoked International.

I’m committed to the revitalization of the handmade and to the enduring value of craftsmanship. I believe that making things is fundamental to how we engage with the world. As an adventurer as well as a designer and builder of bicycles, I see the bicycle as an elegant instrument for exploring landscape. For me, wilderness travel is a knowledge process, and the principle of “design, build, ride” guides my creative practice: designing a bicycle for a specific terrain, building it, and then riding it through that landscape.

My current projects include Þórs víðernisþverun (Thor’s Wilderness Traverse) and a new course, The Iowa Idea at Great Heights: Iceland Solar Eclipse High-Altitude Ballooning Project.

• Innovation and the Revitalization of the Iowa Idea at the University of Iowa
• The ‘Iowa Idea’ takes flight in Iceland

Read More about Steve McGuire's Handmade Bicycle Program:

• Two disciplines. Two wheels. One elite program.
• These Iowa bicycles lovingly built by hand travel all around the world
• Bike Essay: Student Luke Ryan
• Iowa’s Handmade Bicycle Lab, Homegrown at an Art School

Videos

Bike Building

Design, Build, Ride - 601 Miles to Látrabjarg

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