Northern California artists Mark Grieve and Ilana Spector built a 65-foot-tall, 10,000-pound obelisk out of around 340 bicycles – and one tricycle.

The monumental sculpture, called "Cyclisk," has been installed on a streetcorner in Santa Rosa, California. Perhaps ironically, given its composition, the obelisk is right in the midst of a bunch of auto dealerships.

A tribute to the way car culture has sacrificed more eco-friendly bicycle culture? A memento mori for industrial civilization? A reminder that riding your bicycle is both healthier and cheaper than driving a car?

Not necessarily any of the above, says Grieve.

"The statement is up to the viewer and hopefully the work is an intersection of ideas, so it can keep growing with the community," Grieve said in an e-mail to Wired.com. "When a person brings to a piece his/her own interpretation, the piece is 'working' for the community."

The $37,000 piece was built with funds from Nissan, which is building a $3.7 million dealership in the city. Santa Rosa's "1% for art" law dictates that 1% of major construction projects be devoted to public art.

Grieve and Spector collected the hundreds of bicycles they needed for the project from community donations.

"The parameters of the assignment, spearheaded by Santa Rosa Art in Public Places Program, dictated the site, budget and other requirements, and we complied as best we could," Spector said in an e-mail.

It's not the first bicycle sculpture by Grieve: he has sculptures made of bicycle parts in San Rafael, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco.

Click through for a mini-gallery of photos showing the Cyclisk obelisk.