Mark Childs, professor of architecture, in the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning, presents his collection of recycled bottle cap artwork at Farina Pizzeria, 510 Central Ave SE, available for public viewing beginning on Monday, Feb. 3 and remaining on site through the month of February.
“My bottle cap ‘quilts’ are inspired by traditional patchwork quilts, contemporary New Mexico recycling craft, the dotted fields of Australian Aboriginal art, and Pop Art reappropriation of corporate imagery," Childs said.
He added, "Bottle caps are corporate emblems with cultural resonances. They can evoke potentially conflicting feelings of camaraderie, class distinction, regional identity, tradition, industrial mass production and much more. Reframing them as dots of color and pattern within a larger abstract composition is a method to claim that we can wrest control of cultural expression from corporate dominion."
Childs collected bottle caps from local bars and restaurants. "For me, bottle caps also embody a sense of play. Discovering new varieties, trading blues for reds with a friend, having another friend give me a hoard of caps, falling into a meditative rhythm sorting them, and exploring the formal possibilities of their patterns that embodies a sense of play. Who wouldn’t want more than 20,000 bottle caps to play with?," he said.
Most of the quilts are are two feet by two feet and range in price from $170 to $230. Smaller ones run between $40 and $120. A larger one, four feet by four feet is $620. Other sizes are also on display.