This is a full size, standard 5 foot by 4 foot cork board, covered entirely by colored pushpins. I did roughly one row of pins every few days during 2006. If I were the type to call things I made ‘Pieces,’ this ‘piece’ would be titled ‘Pinup.’

There’s really not much backstory to this – the concept occurred to me and seemed pretty fun, and I was in the middle of a long period of indulging my tendency to make ridiculous mosaics. Many projects of this nature (ie Large-scale mosaics built from non-traditional art supplies) yield cries of “Too much free time” and the like, but I would submit that in practice the actual assembly is meditative in a weird, procedural, decidedly non-mystical way. The finished mosaic now lives in my Wife’s office.

Below: Pins in bulk, source material, and a peek at the workarea. More angles of this mosaic, and two other ridiculous mosaics can be seen at mosaics.kempa.com.

‘Pop’ art: If the cap fits, paint it
By Catherine Brennan Hagood

     Need to quench your thirst for some refreshing art? Molly B. Right is celebrating “pop” culture by using old soda bottle caps, Liquid Nails and metal backgrounds in place of traditional oils and canvas.

[...]

     Right’s bottle-cap mosaic series is a foray into the pop-art world with an Old World twist. Her more traditional subject matter completely contradicts the nature of the commercial-oriented world of soda, yet the complex pieces of artwork blend together like cherry and Coke.

     Right’s renderings of the Mona Lisa, the Virgin Mary, plus many others are created with layered bottle caps (some rusted, some completely new), and are thoughtfully glued on her metal canvas.

     The images might then be touched up with a bit of paint, but the bottle caps are often untouched, leaving the Mona Lisa with soda-pop logos all over her face.

[...]

     ”I realized how big my paintings were going to be when I used a single bottle cap for the pupil of an eye. I built the eye around the pupil and realized that my finished product was going to be really big,” Right says.

     Fortunately for her, Right located the owner of an old bottle cap factory and was able to buy the caps by the thousands.

     She actually primes some of these caps by “rusting” them in her back yard before applying them to her artwork. The rusted caps allow for a variation in the color, which lets her add shaded elements or color changes to her pieces.

     ”I put some of the caps in my yard for a while to let them rust, otherwise they would all look brand new,” she says.

     Other bottle caps are used in pristine condition, such as a black bottle cap with a small, white polar bear logo used for a pupil with a twinkle in the eye.

     Right’s final mosaic images are awe-inspiring because of the amount of difficulty in creating something well-rendered with such a difficult medium.

     I also recently received a nice email from yet another fellow bottlecap mosaicist, who pointed out the existence of several other artists active in the cut-throat world of bottle cap art:

Hi Adam,

     Your bottle cap mosaic is really stunning… and I appreciated the links to other artists as well. Like you, I thought I was the only one doing this kind of thing, but I’m not all that surprised to find myself wrong on that count.

     I’ve been doing bottle cap mosaics over the last few years and would love it if you included a link to them on your page. Check them out here. The bottle cap pieces are in the second row from the top.

     A few other links to other artists who do great bottle cap work:

Remi Rubel (link, link)

Ross Palmer Beecher (link) Rick Ladd (link) Antique and folk art using bottlecaps (link, link)

     Sorry to hear about your brother, but I’m also glad to see that you’ve found such great ways to memorialize him, both with the artwork and the scholarship. Best of luck with everything,

John

     You can view my bottle cap mosaic here.

     Today’s feed contained this image. What is it? That requires a bit more explanation.

     There is a group on Flickr called ‘Longline‘ that is described as follows:

     ”The idea of this group is to create a large mosaic of collective pictures, that has a web of lines running through all its constituent images, separating the full image into patches and creating emergent shapes. The concept should be visible in the group icon I created from the first four images in the pool. Join in the fun!”

     Really nerdy people will wonder if the production of this mosaic is automated, and I’m going to venture a guess that it is, based on the tagging methodology for the longline group:

     ”The picture should be tagged with the “long line” tag. In addition there needs to be a “LL” tag coding the sides the line connects to in the picture. The sides are numbered, starting from the top in clockwise direction. A picture connecting the left to the bottom and right would thus be tagged with “LL234″

     …So it looks like the latter tag could easily be used to write an application to logically arrange the images into a connected mosaic, based on which sides are specified (Further research shows that I was right).

     The first thing I thought of when I saw the mosaic was the NES game Pipe Dream:

     In summary: Obscure puzzle game sub-genre + Flickr group + mosaic + this iPhoto poster tutorial [via Waxy] = some awesome wall-art.

1. I love mosaics.
2. I love candy.
3. I love comic books.
4. I love the shit out of combinations of things I like.

     Based on these facts, it should be clear that Snerdles are the greatest thing ever.

     I’d love to see a behind the scenes of how these things are made. I’m assuming it’s automated, and if that’s the case, just think! ROBOTS that make MOSAICS out of NERDS. No, wait – ROBOTS that make SUPERHERO mosaics out of NERDS, FOR NERDS.

     Update: There are examples of other, less geeky varieties of Snerdles here and here. Snerdles appear to be produced by Au’some Candy Company. I emailed them about the production process, but haven’t heard back yet.

     Other, more detailed snerdles links: here, and here.

     You can buy Marvel Snerdles in bulk here.

     I was also recently alerted to an article on Jellybean mosaicist Peter Rocha, which ran in a recent issue of ‘Stuff’ magazine. Jelly Belly has a (creditless) gallery of his works here. There are a few photos of additional works here. Unfortunately, Mr. Rocha is no longer around to bask in my e-preciation (Thank you, 1999!). From the article:

     ”The artist, who immortalized such celebrities as Laurel and Hardy and Queen Elizabeth in his Jelly-bean portraits, died on April 20 at the age of 65. Each of his portraits used about 15,000 beans, and his Ronald Reagan piece hangs in the Ronald Reagan Library.”

Update (2/2010): Looks like snerdles are coming back in a new Super Mario Bros. themed series. I recently heard from an employee of Ausome, the manufacturers of Snerdles – further reenforcing my theory that if you want to know the answer to something, put the question in a blog post and leave it up for five years or so, and eventually someone will answer you. Here’s the tiny bit of information they were able to share about the process:

“There’s a machine which you run sheets of fruit snack through. There are stencils for each color candy bits and they’re laid onto the sheet with a glue (syrup).”

Hooray!

     ”Some projects on craftster are way more art than craft. In this project, Adam Kempa pays homage to his late brother Chris by creating a mosaic of Chris’ likeness made entirely out of different types of bottle caps. It’s an unbelievable technical feat and a touching expression on Adam’s part.”

     Wow! Super nice, and Exciting!

     Chris, who wrote to me about his own bottlecap mosaic in progress after I posted the writeup on mine, has finished his.

     ”Hey man, it’s more or less done, still looking to put a protective coating on it so I can use it as a table without worrying about scratching it up.

     While searching for a suitable material to pour on it I found this site. Also a pretty cool bottle cap project..”

     Here are a few pics of mine, I think it turned out pretty nice, I’m happy with it. I am huge into sailing so this was a natural selection for me considering the colors of caps I had sitting around. For those wondering I first glued the caps down using a glue gun. I then applied UNSANDED grout to fill in the gaps. Then I colored the grout to help emphasize the color changes. I think it really helped to the color the grout.

     It would be awesome if you posted any of these on your website! Please credit it to: “Chris Sivers and his drinking buddies at the University of Waterloo.”

Cheers,
Chris

Candy Heart mosaic, via Chrisnull.com:

     ”Nearly eight foot tall toddler bearing American flag. Built from several thousand pieces of Brach’s small Conversation Heart candy. The war in Iraq distracted me from painting, so I built this figure. Slogans on candy include ‘Mad 4 U’, ‘Hero’, ‘U R Bad’, ‘Be True’, ‘U R Mine’, ‘Go Boy’, ‘Dinomite’, ‘You Rock’, ‘Clueless’, ‘Awesome’, ‘Don’t Ask’, ‘Don’t Tell’, ‘You Rule’, ‘See Ya’, ‘I’m Sure’, ‘Gotcha’, ‘Got Love?’, ‘Fax Me’, ‘email me’,'Dare Ya’, ‘No Way’, ‘Just One’.”

Drinkbox mosaic:

     ”The poster was made at Takakura Junior and Senior High School in Nagoya (Third major city in Japan, one hour or so south of Tokyo by bullet-train).”

     ”The 44 thousand tiles were cut out of coloured drink-pack cartons! The poster uses only 24 colours. Each tile is 3 cm². The finished masterpiece is abouit 4 metres high by 8 metres across. It was their first ever mosaic poster and it took about two weeks to complete.”

From the ‘Link Pile:’

• Great essay by Matt Stone of South Park fame on why he likes math. This is old, but when I went looking for it last year I couldn’t find it. I tried again, and Lo! Here it is.
• If you happened to be into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Or TMNT), or (like me) have an unhealthy affinity for all things ‘Behind the Scenes,’ you might find this archive of TMNT production artwork fascinating. The archive is maintained by co-creator Peter Laird, and entries date from earliest days of the TMNT penomenon through the present. Some highlights include interpretations of the turtles by Will Vinton of California Raisins fame (to promote “Pizza Crunchabungas”) and Jack Kirby of Marvel Comics fame; as well as a look at the working relationship creators Eastman and Laird had with Playmates, the company responsible for the TMNT action figures.

Answering my own question Dept.

     I finally got my hands on a copy of Karaoke Revolution, and got to experience it first hand. It does, in fact, grade based on pitch, as well as rhythm (the timing of each word). You can, however, ‘fool’ it by just humming the correct notes on beat – you don’t need to know the words at all. The difficulty settings allow you to determine how forgiving the judgement will be. All in all, a totally useful music game. Weird! The disc also has some interesting ‘behind the scenes’ video of the in-studio recording sessions for each song in the game (They’re all ‘soundalikes’), and the second volume has a Darkness song, in case your falsetto needs work.

     An article in Readymade several months back pointed me in the direction of canstruction. A brief description:

      “Canstruction combines the competitive spirit of a design/build competition with a unique way to help feed hungry people. Competing teams, lead by architects and engineers, showcase their talents by designing giant sculptures made entirely out of canned foods. At the close of the exhibitions all of the food used in the structures is donated to local food banks for distribution to pantries, shelters, soup kitchens, elderly and day care centers.”

     Below is a soda can portrait of Elvis Presley, which was among the 2003 winners, all of which are well worth seeing.

     I linked to these hook rug images in the original post, but I wanted to point out this one in particular: It’s an anamorphous hook-rug portrait of Marshall “The Medium is the Message” McLuhan. In order to view the portrait, a reflective trash can must be placed in the middle of the rug. The distorted portrait reflects correctly in the rounded surface of the trash can. Amazing on so many levels. Click the image for a closer view.

     Finally, someone who saw the original post re-introduced me to the wooden mirror, which is clearly the best thing ever. It’s a mosaic of 830 wooden tiles that are each connected to a tiny servo motor. A computer captures image data, taken from a camera hidden in the center of the mosaic. This data is translated into positions for each of the servo motors, as the wooden tiles reflect light differently depending on their position. The result is a real time mosaic mirror. Watching this video (Quicktime .mov) of the mosaic in action is the best way to see what exactly is going on.

     In the last months of the year 2000, I made a lego mosaic depicting my late brother, Chris. Legos aren’t the cheapest thing in the world to buy in bulk, so much of that project was funded by returning empty bottles and cans, and using the resultant refunds to purchase the now discontinued ‘blue tubs’ of assorted bricks. On one such trip, I joked to a friend who happened to be with me that my next project would be a mosaic of beer caps, and that my drinking habits would soon be dictated by the graphic design of a beverage’s captops. This was one of those instances when you say something and realize as soon as you’ve said it that it might not be such a bad idea after all. It was appropriately ridiculous.

     Soon after, I started saving caps. I saved for about a year before I even started entertaining the idea of beginning to assemble such a monstrosity. Because of the size of a bottle cap (approximately 1″ diameter, compared to ~.25″ width of a lego ‘square’), the finished mosaic would have to be fairly gargantuan to resolve to an image of roughly the same clarity. I made up my template for the mosaic in the summer of 2002, running another photograph of Chris through a ‘stained glass mosaic’ filter in photoshop. I applied the filter at several different resolutions, ranging from meticulously detailed templates that would be a story or two tall if actually constructed, to the absolute minimum resolution at which the project would still be worthwhile (‘Worthwhile,’ in this case, is of course a subjective term – I use it here to mean ‘The image would still be discernable’).

     I eventually picked one with a resolution somewhere in the middle, to balance the percieved detail against the sheer number of caps that would be required. Sometime in late June 2002, I sorted my collection (which was a five-gallon bucket’s worth at that point) roughly by color and began to determine which caps would correspond to which colored ’tiles’ on my rendered template.

     I started to arrange the first few rows, just to get an idea of what I was in for, and determined that I was going to need a shitload of caps. At this point I briefly considered re-rendering a smaller scale template to expedite the project’s completion, but I finally decided the extra resolution would probably be worth it. At this point I was simply ‘laying out’ the rows on an empty desk in my basement. As I worked beyond the first few rows, it became clear that I would need some way to keep the caps stationary. The solution I arrived at was to use a Ginourmous piece of cardboard and a hot glue gun to hold the caps in place. Using this technique, I tore through my accumulated cap supply in the first dozen rows. I then began the arduous process of cap collection, applying new rows as my supply allowed. This slow collection / gestation period lasted from the summer of 2002 through early 2004.

     During this period I could often be identified by the characteristic jingle of a few day’s worth of accumulated bottle caps in my pockets. I developed a ridiculously comprehensive knowledge of the color of nearly every locally available bottled beverage’s cap, and as prophesized, soon began to alter my drinking habits accordingly. I was intimately aware of any changes in cap design – Which, incidentally, occur fairly often. These changes could be subtle, as illustrated in the slow evolution of the Rolling Rock caps seen below:

     …or drastic and sudden, as in the case of Honey Brown’s lame ‘modernization:’

     At various points, as I worked my way down the rows of the mosaic, the ‘in-demand’ colors changed. A cursory glance at the template above makes it fairly obvious that red, black, and white were going to be the most valuable. As such, I was pretty happy when Smirnoff Ice launched with almost completely solid red cap, and was almost overjoyed when Budweiser changed their cap from a useless gold to a predominantly red design.

     Sometime in Late 2003 it became clear that the ‘ginourmous’ piece of cardboard I had begun with was not going to be large enough. This fact, coupled with the difficulty I had begun to experience in moving and storing the mosaic-in-progress while not working on it, convinced me that I was going to have to come up with a better, more permanent mounting solution. In March 2004 I finally got my shit together and built a sturdy wood frame, found some appropriately gigantic sheets of cardboard, and began final assembly.

     In doing so, I was faced with the monotonous task of transferring the rows I had previously completed to the new ‘canvas.’ I decided to document this process in stop-motion form, and the end result came out way better than I anticipated. Click below to view the 1.8 Mb animated gif file.

     I finally finished the last row of the mosaic this week. I may still ‘touch up’ the white areas, as I’ve recently sorted out a supply of better quality ‘whites.’ The finished mosaic Uses 2,635 caps, and measures roughly six feet tall by four feet wide. It took me a little over three years of periodic attention to complete, which is probably longer than I’ve ever spent working on anything else (Besides my degree).

     I need to thank literally tons of friends who helped with collecting caps, this project would have taken even longer without their help and enthusiasm. I’ve been collecting caps for going on 4 years now, so it’s very likely I’ve forgotten several people, and for this I apologize profusely. I would be more than happy to add your name if I forgot you. An extra special thanks to Jackie Valko who provided a wealth of much-needed reds towards the end.

• Sarah Fabian
• Krysta Stone
• Wendy Stone
• Zach Curd
• Holly Pratt
• Theresa, Mo, and Jackie Valko
• Erik Koppin
• Thunderbirds are Now
• Red Shirt Brigade
• Army / Navy
• Erin Elise
• B&N #2648 Employees
• The Michigan Hat Bartender at the Loop
• Joe Cwik
• The Recital
• Eve from NYC

     Clicking the image below will open a new window with a side-by-side comparison of the original image, the template, and the (almost) finished mosaic. The shape of the bottlecaps gave the final product a sort of horizontal distortion that is only apparent when viewed next to the template.

     And here are a few more ‘detail’ shots of the finished mosaic and the process.

     The mosaic will probably be on display at this year’s barn show, an annual event that raises funds for the Chris Kempa Memorial Scholarship Fund (Offering art scholarships to students at Livonia Franklin Highschool since 2001).

Other Bottlecap Art

     For some reason, whenever I told people I was collecting large amounts of bottlecaps, they always assumed I was making a coffee table. While I haven’t found any evidence that anyone has ever tried constructing a bottlecap mosaic before me, I have turned up several examples of bottlecap art on the internet. Here they are, in a handy bulleted list format: (Update! I’ve found several other mosaic examples, which I must admit is disappointing in a weird way. There’s an 8 foot by 8 foot bathroom floor, depicting a diver; a few giant college logos; the cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’; and “The largest sign made out of bottle caps consisted of 105,000 Karmel beer bottle caps and was created by Browary Lubelskie S.A. in Lublin, Poland on June 19, 1999.” More info here.)

• The Crowncap Collectors Society International.
• Bottlecap snakes & people.
• Guatemalan bottlecap crosses.
• Bottlecap frames
• Many bottlecap projects
• Dorm Room Decorations.
• Bottlecap aquarium

     Know of any others?

Other ridiculous mosaics

     In working on this project, I also found several examples of similarly ridiculous mosaics and large-scale re-renderings of various images. Here are some highlights:

• The new hot mosaic medium seems to be pieces of bread toasted different shades of brown, as I’ve found one group making a really big and well-executed one here, and another guy making tons of toast mosaics, of slightly lesser quality, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. It could be argued that the toast mosaics I deemed ‘of slightly lesser quality’ are actually more ‘pure,’ as the entire slice of bread is toasted one consistent shade, while in the previous example, some inconsistent toasting is used to vary the relative darkness over the surface of each individual slice of bread. I digress, however, as this is an argument that no one but me gives a good goddamn about.
• One of the most intricate Lego mosaics ever can be found here, made using some weird sort of discontinued learning pieces. The resultant effect is that of ASCII art using small plastic characters. This was done by Eric Harshbarger, who does all sorts of insane stuff with Legos. Also: That’s his JOB. His other ridiculous mosaic examples can be found here, here, and here he documents the construction of a mosaic. Basically his whole site is incredibly good. Here he discusses his need for assistants, etc.
• The Photoshop mosaic filter as fine art: From far away these paintings seem to depict nude folks in engaging in varying degrees of intimate contact. Up close, it’s just a bunch of colored squares.
• Some pretty nice domino mosaic portraits are here.
• Glass mosaics of Hitchcock films in London: here and here.
• Two absolutely INSANE images (You need to see them both to ‘Get it’) that I grabbed off of an eBay auction that was linked somewhere several months ago. Image one: The big picture. Image Two: The lurking message. A few nice rebuttals can be find in this mosaic, assembled from images of America’s dead in Iraq; and this mosaic, assembled from photographs of actual assholes.
• Rubik’s Cubes solved to specific patterns in order to compose multi-cube mosaics.
• Several images recast as hook rugs.

     Know of any others?