Josh Hadar

Artists

Luigi Colani - “He builds incredible and outrageous, futuristic, designer vehicles. He designs a lot of spaceships for movies. He is a futurist with gorgeous lines. He is a huge inspiration to me and it would be a dream to do a project with him.”

Work by Luigi Colani

Raymond Loewy - "I really like and am inspired by Raymond Lowey, who was a leader in the art deco period. He did these really beautiful streamlined locomotive trains, and even did a pencil sharpener in that tear drop shape. Really beautiful stuff."

"My aesthetic with my own bikes is clearly a very flowing streamline design. I like my bikes to look like they’re moving even though they’re not. Very aerodynamic and flowing like water."

Roxy Paine - “His sculpture work is beautiful. My trees have been compared to his although he works in stainless steel and I use bike frame piping and tubing made of regular steel.”

Roxy Paine Working on "Maelstrom" - Photo by Jeremy Liebman

WK Interactive - “WK Interactive is a friend of mine. He started out as a graffiti artist but now does fine art. He works a lot with glue and paper and creates great feeling and motion. He did a piece protesting the Iraq War and other politically driven works.”

WK Interactive - Source

Invader - “He did a series of tiled mosaics that look amazing. Amorphous to a million images that didn’t look to form anything until seen through the screen of a cell phone. You see beautiful Zepplin album covers and other really interesting things. He is really innovative.”

Invader - Source

Magazines

Juxtapoz - “For the art that I am personally interested in its one of the more relevant magazines and websites. I love it. My art is street inspired and they feature a lot of that kind of stuff.”

"One of my missions with my designs is to take the bicycle and elevate to an accepted art form. A lot of my clients buy my bikes and hang them on their wall, which is cool because they're nice to look at - but all of them do ride. That's part of the art. They're all mechanically sound and that's what I consider the most important part of them. Anyone can design an outrageous bike but if they don't ride it's kitsch and what's the point of that?"

Intersection - "Intersection Magazine is a great magazine and a cool idea. They feature automotive designers like Luigi Colani and loads of other interesting designers"
 
BIKING

West Side Highway Bike Path - "This bike path goes for miles up the Hudson. It's a great place to take a relaxing bike ride and has really made biking in the city hassle free."

Art Galleries and Museums

Eyebeam Art & Technology Center - “They concentrate on art and design that blends with technology and that’s what my art is about. They feature a lot of multimedia and interactive video, sculptures that move and things like that. John Johnson, the founder, was the first guy to buy one of my bikes.”

Museum of Modern Art - “The ultimate goal for every living artist is to get their work featured at the MoMA. They show the finest modern art in the world and it would be a dream to be presented alongside artists like Picasso, Monet and Lichtenstein.”

MoMa - Source

Jonathan Levine Gallery -  “I like how he curates and the collection of artists he represents.”

Museum of Natural History -  “This was my favorite museum as a kid and remains so. I could spend all my time in there exploring everything from the gem stones to the dinosaur bones.”

"I go to furniture exhibits. I like to go to the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Javits Center. There's always interesting stuff there."

"The most challenging part of the bike is the physicality of the work. I’m bending pipes a lot of times and I’m doing it all alone.  It’s literally like spending six hours at the gym and it’s like literally bending steel with your bare hands. It’s exhausting and I pull a muscle every couple of weeks. It’s just really hard on the body." 

Highline - “There’s a particular installation on the Highline that I really like. It’s like a theater with tiered raised seating overlooking 10th ave.  From below, looking up, it looks like high def tv. It’s a very cool interactive installation.”

SOURCE: Flickr

FOOD

"If you want the true bohemian art culture you have to go to Queens. Go out to Astoria. There's a great art scene out there. You can eally see young talent, young inspiration and very refreshing ideas coming out of there. Astoria also has some great Greek food."

LaHore Deli - “This Pakistani food stand on Crosby between Houston and Prince is outstanding and inexpensive. All the taxi drivers stop there. Its so 'New York' and like visiting another country at the same time.”

“I bend a lot of them frames for bikes on the walls down in the subways. People always look at me funny, like I’m some kind of vandal trying to pry something off the walls with a pipe, but whatever, I’m just bending bikes.”

La Esquina – "They’ve got great food and I love the Goodfellas-esque entrance to it. This place is always a fun place to eat at."

Blue Ribbon - "I actually got the idea for my bikes coming back from Blue Ribbon, which is a favorite place of mine. My wife and I were walking home and I saw a dumpster full of bike parts. I jumped in and started hurling frames out of the trash and in to the streets. People probably thought I was nuts."

Public - "Public on Elizabeth Street has a nice brunch. My wife and I go there a lot. It's one of our favorite brunch spots in the city."

Café Habana – "Cafe Habana has really good Cuban food. Years ago I was on a date and we were the only 2 people in there. We were talking about Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness and then we look up and there’s Francis Ford Coppola and his wife. It’s just a neighborhood--y joint that I like."

“My wife and I went on our honeymoon to Africa. We went on a safari in Tanzania and Kenya and I saw these lions and cheetahs and I got really inspired by that.  When I got home I designed these bio-morphic bikes that mimicked the lions with rib cages and glass hearts that pump gas like blood through the bikes. It became my heart bike series.”

CLASSES

Urban Glass - “This is the place to go to learn how to blow glass. They have ovens and all the equipment needed. You can even get a private instructor like I did. It’s a great collective and an excellent resource.”

Rob Wynne

Burn Clinic - “The burn clinic is a class that I run out of my studio. I teach small groups of 4-5 people on basic metal sculpting techniques. You can contact me through my website.”