Artist Carolina Fontoura Alzaga constructs impressive chandeliers using chains, wheels and other parts from old bicycles as part of a series she calls CONNECT. Alzaga has lived in Brazil and Mexico and now works out of a studio in Los Angeles where the Etsy Blog recently caught up with her to conduct the interview and tour above. Of her work she says:

This developing body of work draws inspiration from the aesthetics of victorian era chandeliers, DIY and Bike Culture, and follows an art tradition of utilizing non artistic materials for sculpture.

This series addresses class codes, power dynamics, reclaimed agency, and ecological responsibility. The traditional chandelier is seen as a bourgeois commodity, a cachet of affluence, excess, and as such power. The recycled bicycle parts become a representation of the dismissed, invisible, and powerless, but are also an affirmation of self-propelled movement. The bicycle chandelier thereby creates a new third meaning of reclaimed agency.