Jamie Stewart, a local photographer, recently saved beloved pieces of Sarasota public art from the scrap pile: whimsically decorated bicycles created by the late William Pearson, a.k.a. Dr. Nik.

Dr. Nik was born in Warwick, New York, about 60 miles north of New York City along the New Jersey border. He attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, where he studied photography, sculpting and painting. In addition to creating public art, he told us he'd been the “fashion conscious caretaker” (in other words, the handyman, doing electric, plumbing, carpentry and whatever else was asked of him) at Florida Studio Theatre.

“I create weird shit,” he told us in a 2019 interview. “That’s what I do.”

Stewart, a friend of the artist, who died in April, spotted the bikes on a flatbed trailer while pumping gas on Aug. 8.

Turns out, a scrap business had purchased the contents of Dr. Nik’s storage unit—but when Stewart approached the company, they agreed to sell the bikes to her for  $1,000. Stewart knew that Dr. Nik was a longtime member of the WSLR+Fogartyville community, so she alerted the nonprofit about the sale in the hopes it would save the bikes.

It worked. The WSLR+Fogartyville team created a crowdfunding campaign and posted it to social media, and within minutes, the campaign was fully funded—almost entirely by one person, Donna Pickup, who wrote , “I love Dr. Nik’s art!” with her donation.

The scrap business delivered a dozen bikes, metal marionettes and other puppets, paintings and drawings to Fogartyville on Aug. 9. The team there is still working on a plan for the art, some of which will be installed at Fogartyville. Additional art may be utilized to benefit the nonprofit’s endowment in Dr. Nik’s memory.