Bottle Cap Mosaic Fish No. 58, 2017

Bottle Cap Mosaic Fish No. 58, 2017
Budweiser, Bud Light and Bud Light Platinum bottle caps, plywood, primer, aluminum flashing, jar lid, copper and chrome plated nails
20″ H x 50″ W x 1.5″ D

This Bottle Cap Mosaic Fish is somewhat historic. I made it with the some of last crown caps left over from my epic commission for Stagecoach, Old Glory. Old Glory is an American flag created from over 20,000 Budweiser bottle caps and was commissioned by Golden Voice and Budweiser for the 2015 Stagecoach Music Festival. Some of the same batch of Bud Light caps were also used in La Siren III, commissioned by The American Museum of Natural History for their traveling exhibit Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids: Mythic Creatures. So, when you hang this piece on your wall, you are in some very good company!

These fish mosaics make great restaurant decor as well. Two hang in Chef David Burke's Burke in the Box, in Las Vegas, NV. One hangs at Jerry’s Sandwiches, Chicago, IL along with other work I've made.

The fins and tail are cut from aluminum flashing. The nails used to affix the caps are copper plated and the nails on the flashing are chromed. The plywood is primed with two layers of Kilz primer. Heavy duty D-rings are affixed to the back to make the fish easy to hang. Each of my Bottle Cap Mosaic Fish are signed, dated and numbered on the back. Care must be taken not to hang them in direct sunlight as the ink on the caps may fade.

The most amazing thing about these fish is the way they interact with light. When you look at one or two caps from any brand, they're generally not all that impressive. But when you group hundreds of them together and let them catch the sunlight,  they truly glow.  The combination of the background color with the logos and metallic nails can create color tones that are vibrant and lively and wholly unexpected— similar to impressionist paintings created of many, many small dabs of color.

What I like most about making the Bottle Cap fish mosaics is that the overlapping texture of the caps does such a good job of representing scales. You can see all the previous bottle cap mosaics I've made by visiting the Bottle Cap Mosaic Gallery on my blog.