Plastic bottle caps - like bags, a plastic product that can’t be/ isn’t recycled.  I conceived of an “endless column” of these caps, after Constantin Brancusi’s iconic modernist sculpture.  One became two, and two became many.  While making these columns, I noticed the smaller caps tended to nest inside one another, and the color combinations reminded me of Chuck Close’s painted portraits.  So I got sidetracked and started on a large self-portrait (which I titled CLOSE)made entirely of bottle caps.  The piece measures 8 feet by 7 feet.  No paint is used, except to delineate a few shadows where white board was showing through.  In a few cases, the caps are trimmed in order to fit a tight space.

“My Eye,” which at 30” x 38” is about 5 times the detail of the eye in my large self-portrait.

The newest work in this series are Endless Columns created for an installation at the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago, which are mounted on metal rods and planted in the ground.  I will be displaying them in Orebro Sweden at their OpenART festival in summer 2013.

See my “How To...” page if you want to try this.