Once upon a time, before most people could read, painting and sculpture were tools of common communication. Artworks told stories about popular themes: hunts, celebrity lives, deities and battles.

When more people could read, artists became more technically experimental, offered more personal interpretations, sometimes treating the medium as the message.

But a few, like Patty Grazini, a Seattle-based self-taught artist, continue to tell tales in an unusual way. She explains that her detailed, relatively small sculptures “recapture forgotten moments and scenes from history. ”

Her recent collection of 13 sculptures, each about a foot tall and crafted mostly from recycled paper, are character studies of people who committed crimes in New York City between 1885-1915. Fascinated by this period of social change, a time when people were both very wealthy and very poor, she browsed old issues of the New York Times online to discover interesting subjects. She selected ones whose crimes were unusual or perpetrated in an unusual way.

The body of each sculpture is fashioned from book pages and old paper over a frame of lollipop sticks and wrapping paper tubes. Flexible wire inside the arms allows them to be posed. None have human faces. Instead Grazini assigns each the head of a bird or animal she associates with the nature of each crime. The clothes, made from recycled paper, are not only accurate to fashion of the day but also help tell the criminal’s story.

Ludwig B. Goldhorn (above) was an accountant in an insurance agency.  In 1894 he embezzled money to pay his way on a butterfly expedition to South America. Grazini used pages from a logarithm book for his shirt. Butterflies, cut from postage stamps, flutter on his clothes. He stands beside a cage of butterflies; his hands are handcuffed behind his back. His head is that of a wild boar because, like the boars, Goldhorn was hard to control and large and clumsy. The artist liked the contrast of a clumsy human who risked all to study delicate butterflies.

When Mary Malloy (above) was arrested for shoplifting in 1898, $10,000 was discovered in her bustle — nobody ever said where she got it. Grazini gave her the head of a deer because the last place she lived was Deer Island. And like deer, Malloy didn’t stay in one place. After shoplifting in one state, she moved on to another. Her clothes are made with foreign currency.

Ada Turise was arrested at age 16 in 1884 as an underage opium smoker (it was legal in the United States to smoke opium when you were 18 until 1913). Turise, who lived in New York City’s Chinatown, has the head of a sheep because she was exposed to the drug in the opium dens in her neighborhood and joined her friends smoking. Her parents, who lived outside the city, said they couldn’t figure out how their daughter got into this habit. Grazini dressed her in marbled paper removed from the inside cover of a book, because it has a psychedelic feel, and gave her a headpiece resembling a costume from a Chinese opera.

Patty Grazini exhibits mostly on the West Coast. She mounts no more than one exhibit a year because it takes so long to create each piece.  A previous show consisted of 12 pairs of her take on 18th-century decorated shoes.  She decided on the theme after buying a genuine woman’s antique shoe mold in a thrift store.  She built the 9″ long shoes of white paper and painted each pair to reveal something about the times.

“Grey Shoes.” Grazini imagined Cupid as a girl who wore grey shoes. Nearby is Cupid’s arrow with a ring attached.

To see more of Grazini’s work, visit her website.

“Guerilla Art” conjures up visions of confrontational subway taggers or the latest surreptitious Banksy installation — an anonymous creative work that makes a public statement. The two sculptures that mysteriously appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August 2011 also fit that definition, in a witty and literary fashion.

The medium — repurposed books — was the message: “Support the literary arts.”

The festival works turned out to be part of a series of 10 intricately crafted from recycled hardbacks and snuck into libraries and museums in the Scottish capital throughout the spring and summer. The identity of the artist has yet to be revealed, although bestselling mystery author Ian Rankin has admitted that he aided and abetted the project in his hometown.

In March 2012, Rankin told Claudia Massie of the Spectator’s Arts Blog that he had never met the artist before she contacted him about her plan to raise awareness of the need to protect and consolidate the city’s artistic heritage.

“She proposed the leaving of one or two sculptures around the city when she visited with her partner,” Rankin said. “I met them both for the first time during that trip. Having thought it a success, she then decided to make some more sculptures to be distributed during further trips to Edinburgh.”

The literary invasion began with a delicate “poetree” found at the Scottish Poetry Library in March. An accompanying card, addressed to the library’s Twitter name, read: “It started with your name @byleaveswelive and became a tree… We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books … a  book is so much more than pages full of words … This is for you, in support of libraries, books, words, ideas … a gesture (poetic maybe?)”

This paper tree sculpture appeared in the the Scottish Poetry Library. Alongside the tree were two golden egg halves, covered and filled with phrases from the poem, “A Trace of Wings” by Edwin Morgan.

In all, sculptures appeared at the book festival, in the poetry library, the National Library of Scotland, the Scottish Storytelling Centre, the Central Lending Library, the Writers’ Museum, the National Museum of Scotland, and The Filmhouse cinema, “in support of libraries, books, words, ideas … and all things ‘magic.’” They are all still on display, if not in their original settings.

This sculpture, carved from a Rankin novel, was left in the Scottish Storytelling Centre. The attached card read, "“...A gift in support of libraries, books, works, ideas...Once upon a time there was a book and in the book was a nest and in the nest was an egg and in the egg was a dragon and in the dragon was a story....”

Rankin’s connection to the plot was revealed in subtle ways: his face appears on one of the audience members at The Filmhouse, some of his books formed the basis of other works, and he was appearing at the book festival on the day the works were discovered there. He — or rather his Twitter handle @beathhigh — was thanked by the artist in the guest book of the poetry library, where the final sculpture was discovered in September. To see more of the paper sculptures that popped up in Scotland visit this site.

In December a new Twitter account called “a book for xmas” appeared, with tweets addressed to the sculptures’ recipients. The tweets read, “In support of books, words, ideas and wishing you a magical xmas” and a link to a video on Vimeo (below).

That’s the 21st-century twist to this bookish tale of intrigue. All the notes on the sculptures were addressed to the institutions’ Twitter addresses.

And the last chapter has yet to be written: At the end of April 2012, three similar sculptures — one carved from an old encyclopedia — were discovered under equally puzzling circumstances in public libraries in London. Whether they were created by the same artist who set Edinburgh a-twitter last year, no one may ever know. But no one is trying too hard to find out, either.

“I think of it as a little gift, and we’re going to share it while it’s here,” according to a library spokeswoman. “It’s brightened everybody’s day.”

That’s a worthy statement for any work of art, anonymous or otherwise.

If you go looking for the roots of the Art Eco movement, you will soon run across the Dumpster Divers of Philadelphia.

Twenty years ago, a half-dozen artists who were already working with found objects were getting together informally in diners around town, sharing ideas. Joel Spivak, Neil Benson and Leo Sewell were part of the group, which has since grown into a collection of 40 artists, a pop up gallery, events, eco-education programs for school-aged kids, exhibitions up and down the East Coast, and inspiration for the next generation of environmentally conscious artists.

Isaiah Zagar standing in front of his mural surrounding the Magic Garden. He placed trashed mirrors, bottles, bicycle parts and tile into the walls. The Garden turned into a labyrinth with tunnels and alcoves filled with his murals.

An original Diver, Isaiah Zagar, began transforming a vacant South Philadelphia lot into the fantastical mosaic Magic Gardens in 1994 with detritus from the South Street corridor, just after the monthly meetings formalized into an organization (albeit without bylaws or dues). Zagar’s efforts reflect the Divers’ philosophy of creating beauty out of what other people call “trash,” and helped revitalize the entire neighborhood.

Benson said what brought the Divers together originally was an aversion to paying for art supplies.

“My motto is ‘Trash is just a failure of imagination’,” he said in a 2011 video interview.

That imagination was on display in 2006, when 25 of the Divers all took the same 25 objects and created the now legendary “25 x 25” exhibit.

“Moter and Cild” by Burnell Yow, which was displayed in the “25 x 25” exhibit. He said “It would have been ‘Mother and Child’ but I didn’t have any Scrabble™ pieces of the letter ‘H.’” (Photo by Yow)

Untitled sculpture by Betsy Alexander, which was displayed in the “25 by 25” exhibit. (Photo by Yow)

The Divers also have an aversion to paying for gallery space. Benson said they have worked successfully with several landlords to fill otherwise-empty commercial spaces for no rent, with the understanding that the gallery would move as soon as a paying tenant surfaced. It’s a way to keep neighborhoods from becoming derelict, and the arts have been keeping the lights on for business during the real estate bust in locations around the country.

Group photo of the Dumpster Divers taken at The 2012 Annual Diver Awards Banquet at the Famous Deli. (Photo by I. George Bilyk)

For their two-decade dedication “to raise the consciousness of art lovers and heighten awareness of taking a creative approach to support a more sustainable city, country and world,” the Dumpster Divers received an official Tribute from the Mayor of Philadelphia Michael A. Nutter. He recognized April 1-7, 2012, as the 20th anniversary of the group, and urged all citizens to be aware of their ongoing efforts “to ensure Philadelphia’s future as a green and sustainable city through recycling…”

To see what the Dumpster Divers are up to now, visit their website.

We take them for granted, but bottle caps— the metal ones with a corrugated edge used to seal glass bottles — have only been around since 1891.  The man who invented them, William Painter, was born in 1848, three years after commercial production of soda water began. Painter collaborated with manufacturers to develop a bottle to work with it and by 1935 most beer and soft drink bottles had these single-use caps.

Although street performers stuck them on their shoes to give their soles some tap and city kids used them to play a form of sidewalk shuffleboard, throughout the 20th century most people threw the little disks out and never thought twice about it.

Because used bottle caps are ubiquitous, plentiful and free, mostly self-taught artists began looting their local bars’ trash cans to produce idiosyncratic work. But, in the mid 1900s, the broad art community started pushing the boundaries of traditional art mediums and seeing what they could do with new materials — including bottle caps. The results are imaginative, varied and visually surprising.

Left: Bottlecap Basket. c. 1940. Courtesy of Ames Gallery. Right: This bottlecap man was made in Guatemala.

Israeli metalsmith Yoav Kotik makes jewelry with color-matched bottle caps.

American sculptor Ryan Lytle created “Nautilus” with them.

“Michelle Obama” made from flattened, vintage bottle caps by self-taught artist Molly Bright.

This Bottle Cap Lounger was created by an artist in Senegal.

Rick Ladd covers furniture and home accessories with bottle caps.

Bottle cap van. Photo by Tracy Madaj.

All this brings new meaning to the term “Pop Art.”  We can’t wait to see what else can be created with bottle caps.

Kathryn Edwards moves quickly, in both good and bad times. In April 2011, she lost her 9-to-5 job as an exhibit planner. After recouping for two weeks, she decided to blaze a new career path, one that had been lurking in the back of her mind for a while.

An environmentalist and painter, Edwards decided to use her personal savings to launch an international juried Eco Arts competition. It would accept only eco-themed entries in six categories — Repurposed Materials in Art and Design; Songwriting; Short Videos; Fine Art; Photography; and Literature.

“Fukushima, the Forgotten Noah’s Ark” -- Animal activist in search of abandoned animals Odaka City, Fukushima “No-Go Zone,” Japan. Photograph by Pierpaolo Mittica, from Italy. Finalist in the Photography competition.

She then developed a website, located 17 prominent judges, and announced the Eco Arts Awards competition in June 11, 2011. Funds tight, she publicized the competition, with the help of friends, via social media.

“Got Methane” by Stephen Shub from the US. Finalist in the Fine Art category.

People heard the call. Edwards received entries from 17 countries on six continents. The first juried competition closed on Jan. 31, 2012; the winners will be announced in April.

“Mobile Garden Dress” by Canadian artist, Nicole Dextras. This dress is a self-sustaining garden and flexible shelter, complete with pots of edible plants and a hoop skirt which converts into a tent at night. A finalist in the Repurposed Materials and Design division.

First Place in each category will receive $1,000, with additional prizes for People’s Choice awards. Edwards said she was thrilled by the response and quality of entries. “I learned artists have a great deal of interest in examining how we interact with the planet,” she said.

Voting for the first People’s Choice awards is still open. Check them out here:

Repurposed Materials in Art & Design

Songwriting (the most popular category)

Short Videos

Fine Art

Photography

Literature

The second Eco Arts Awards competition is now open. To learn more about the awards, visit their site.

“Art teachers have always used found materials,” Marilyn Brackney said.  “Budgets for art materials are slim, and late in the semester funds are gone. Teachers had to fall back on free supplies.”

Brackney speaks from experience. A trained artist and art educator, she lives in Columbus, Indiana, where she taught in local public schools. In 1988 her budget for art supplies was reduced from $1,000 to $250 for the semester, so she collected discarded items to reuse as art materials. Then she had to figure out projects for them that would interest her elementary through high school students.

While developing her course, she listed each material (e.g., aluminum cans, calendar pictures, latex house paint ) along with step-by-step instructions for each activity.

To share these ideas, her husband, who was director of  technology for the Columbus school system, created a website, The Imagination Factory. The Trash Matcher section pairs each waste material with an illustrated art/recycling “how-to” activity.  It’s a great help to teachers planning classes and parents figuring out what to do with children unexpectedly housebound for an afternoon. The site has been visited by millions of people.

The Imagination Factory website is a family project. The Brackneys' daughter, author Susan Brackney, created the logo.

During her classes Brackney talks about landfills and the need to reuse materials to raise the students’ awareness of the environment. She created Trashasaurus Rex, a 300 pound dinosaur, 9 1/2 feet tall by 11 feet long, made entirely of household rubbish, in protest to a court ruling that forced Indiana to accept trash from the East Coast although their local landfills were almost all filled up. After exhibiting it in Indiana and Florida to raise awareness, she donated it to the Rocky Mount Children’s Museum of North Carolina.

No longer teaching in the public schools, Brackney holds private classes in her home and updates the website with new projects and ideas. She also curates and mounts exhibits created with reused materials — the  Deja Vu Fine Art and Crafts Show — held periodically in Columbus.

In honor of Super Bowl Week 2012,  Brackney was asked to create Tree Cozies to decorate the downtown area of Columbus, an hour from the stadium in Indianapolis. With the help of 32 young volunteers, the group created Super Kids from old and spare mittens, stuffed with fibers from an old pillow.

Super Kids decorations made from odd mittens in honor of the Super Bowl.

Another Indiana art educator, Joe LaMantia, who lives in Bloomington, aims to demystify art, developing projects with communities and schools that they can work on as a group.  He offers “a holistic approach to creating art that’s shaped for each unique cultural setting” with children, parents, families and staff to encourage their imagination. The adults help in assembling the framework for each project, which are usually made with reused materials.

Originally studying to be an architect, LaMantia has picked up a variety of skills in several art careers: He taught art therapy in an adult day care center, spent years as a dimensional illustrator for magazines and publications and helped install exhibits in Boston at the Institute of Contemporary Art and MIT art gallery before carving out his niche as an educator and collaborative, public artist.

For example, when his daughter’s school was moving to a new building, LaMantia approached the principal and suggested that they use materials from the old school for art in the new school.  With the school’s support, he secured funding from the state and city; eventually more than 30 organizations donated money and services.

The result, completed in 2010, is a 12-foot-tall head of a cat — based on a drawing by a fourth grader — made from recycled and new steel. Cat parts are made from recycled steel and aluminum:  The aluminum lettering comes from signage of the old school; the aluminum mouth comes from the old fire escape, the cast iron nose comes from a metal fire door that had these cast iron rollers and the whiskers come from recycled reinforcement rods from a local scrape yard. To make this as inclusive as possible, all the children, teachers  and adults of the school put their handprints on the cat which in turn gave a texture that looks like fur. The project involved about 350 people: students, parents and the immediate community.

Cat made from recycled steel, outside the Artful Learning Center in Bloomington, Indiana.

As Artist in Residence, LaMantia helped a school in Indianapolis build The Villagers’ Bell Tower to commemorate 80 villagers who settled the school’s neighborhood in the late 1800s. Each bell includes a historic or cultural reference to the original settlement.

LaMantia, who has also developed community projects in Kentucky, Illinois, Oklahoma and Minnesota, continues to raise public awareness of the environment while creating an opportunity to work as a community, one unique project at a time.

For more information, visit his website.

I first became conscious of altered books 12 years ago when a graphic artist friend, Sue, told me she was creating them. She pointed out it is O.K. to reuse old, unwanted books, which are, unfortunately, in ample supply.

Books become obsolete — unreadable through wear and tear, or simply outdated. Sue took only the ones that “spoke to her” in the pile her library threw out each year.

I cringe to think of my contributions to the orphan-book pile: the tech manuals for WordPerfect and other extinct technologies, last year’s phonebooks, and old one-volume encyclopedias that I must re-home or send to ruin periodically as I make room in my library for new titles. It’s tough for readers, but great for artists — free supplies.

Since then, I have been looking for exhibits of altered books in galleries and museums.

Turns out the term is very broad. It refers to any artwork that changes the appearance of a book and/or its function or meaning. The change can be minute — the artist can change just one page — or transformational (for instance, combining several books to form a sculpture).

Anything goes in altering books. Techniques include cutting, gluing, painting, rubber stamping, changing the shape, among others. Here are a few artists using books as their medium — the tip of the iceberg, or a blurb for the back cover, if you will.

Chen Long-Bin prefers to work with out-of-date books, magazines and phonebooks. He uses a buzz saw to transform these information-saturated materials into detailed sculptures that are exhibited internationally.

“One Buddha, Two Systems (New York)” by Chen Long-Bin. Mixed media sculpture with Chinese and English New York Yellow Pages. 43 x 28 x 28 cm. 2008.

Georgia Russell is a Scottish artist who dissects printed matter, music scores, maps, newspapers and photographs into what she calls “membranes of memories.” Her work is seen internationally and included in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s permanent collection.

“Cut Book in a Bell Jar” by Georgia Russell. 17.5" high. 2007.

“Cut Book Jacket in an Acrylic Case” by Georgia Russell 13.75" x 11.75" x 4".

Brian Dettmer started out as a painter. When he worked in a sign shop, he began to explore the relationship between text and images and eventually started working with old books in 2000. Today he works with older dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, wallpaper sample books, comic books and other printed materials. “The book’s intended function has decreased and the form remains linear in a non-linear world,” he said. “By altering physical forms of information and shifting preconceived functions, new and unexpected roles emerge….”

“New International Dictionary, 2003” by Brian Dettmer 12" x 9" x 7".

Alex Queral creates mostly celebrity 3-D portraits from bound phone books, using only an X-acto knife and acrylic paint. The faces are often painted with a monochromatic wash to separate the image from the printed background page, which remains untouched. Queral said that he is “celebrating the individual lost in the anonymous list of thousands of names.” The sculpture is then sealed with acrylic to preserve the work.

“Albert Einstein” and “Barack Obama” by Alex Queral.

And, on the practical side, Kara Witham is one of several people who offer hollowed-out book safes for sale on the web, at her Etsy store.

“Hollow Book Safe & Flask - The Odyssey” by Kara Witham.

For further information about these artists, check these websites.

• Chen Long-Bin
• Alex Queral
• Karra Whitham
• Georgia Russell

Deep into January. I was preparing dinner, feeling as grey as the sky outside — we were supposed to have snow the next day. Then, in between the equally dreary news on the radio, something interesting caught my ears.

I heard Robert Siegel on All Things Considered interviewing the director of a movie called “Oka!,”  about a group of Bayaka pygmies who live in the Central African Republic. Interesting enough.

Then he said the pygmies produce “stunning music – (with) their voices, and their use of virtually everything around them, trees, even the water in the stream, as musical instruments.”  I was hooked.

For background, the director explained that the Bayaka, a forest people, are among the most ancient people on earth, being related to the San bushmen and the original inhabitants of Africa, and they remain hunter-gatherers. The word “oka” means listen in their language, Aka. The children begin singing and dancing with the group when they are two years old.

The soundbites he played awakened the armchair traveler in me, who took a YouTube break while dinner simmered. It was enchanting. I plan to buy a copy of the CD of the soundtrack, “Listen, Oka” when it is released in February. (The movie, unfortunately, received mixed reviews.)

What exactly does a river played like a drum sound like? Here’s a quick example:

Here are some Bayaka Women Yodelers — many wearing hats made from large leaves:

And a more formal introduction to the Bayaka culture:

Here are some beautiful recordings of songs with still illustrations (ethereal duet sung by two girls):

I love to both travel and listen to my friends talk about their trips — especially those taken by artist WC-P and her husband, WP, who is an expert with electronics and machines as well as a connoisseur of old cars. The couple only drive vintage cars which WP has renovated. He spent four months restoring a comfortable, roomy 1989 Grand Marquis station wagon which they drove from Arlington, Virginia to visit the iconic Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas on their vacation in 2007.

Forty years ago, Amarillo billionaire Stanley Marsh lll wanted to create a piece of public art that would baffle the locals. In 1974 he supported a proposal by a group of San Francisco artists known as the Ant Farm to develop a tribute to the evolution of the Cadillac’s tail fin. The artists drove 10 different Cadillac models into one of his fields along Route 66 west of Amarillo, and then half-buried them, hood down, in the dirt — supposedly at the same angle as the Great Pyramid of Gaza. The cars faced west in a line, their tail fins displayed for all to see.

Often-decorated Cadillacs displayed at Cadillac Ranch.

WP visiting the Cadillac Ranch with obligatory supplies -- camera and spray paint -- in hand.

Marsh and the artists watched what happened next. People visited the cars and defaced them or tore off pieces as souvenirs; the tail fins disappeared. Stripped to their frames and splattered with spray paint, the Cadillacs are still on display for large numbers of international tourists who arrive with spray paint and cameras. Adding their graffiti, they ask others to take pictures of them, before someone else comes by and repaints it.

Unfortunately, other tributes to the whole American car have not fared as well.

Spindle, a 1989 sculpture, was located in a shopping center parking lot in Berwyn, Illinois. Commissioned by the center’s owner from sculptor Dustin Shuler, it consisted of eight cars — including the owner’s BMW — impaled on a 50-foot spike. The sculpture’s foundation extended 30 feet into the ground and cost $75,000 to install.

Spindle became both a tourist attraction — it was featured in the film, Wayne’s World, and in the syndicated comic strip, Zippy the Pinhead — and a source of civic controversy.  Some citizens petitioned the mayor to remove it while the mayor claimed it attracted more business to the town. In 2007 it was removed when the shopping center site was redeveloped and nobody ponied up the  $350,000 needed to relocate it.

"Spindle" as it once appeared as a sculpture in Berwyn, Illinois' shopping center.

A 1987 family reunion produced Carhenge in a field outside Alliance, Nebraska, where farmer Jim Reinders has constructed a unique memorial to his father.

While living in England, Reinders had studied the structure and proportions of the ancient Stonehenge. Instead of using massive stones for his monument, however, Reinders arranged 38 vintage American cars, all covered with grey spray paint, in a 95-foot diameter circle. Some sit upright, trunk-end down, in pits nearly five feet deep, with other cars welded on top to form arches. Other automobile sculptures have been added to the Carhenge location over the years.

Carhenge was listed as one of Time magazine’s Top 50 American Roadside Attractions and was featured in the 2007 travel book, 1,000 Places to See in the USA and Canada Before You Die.

"Carhenge," a megalith built on a farm outside Alliance, Nebraska.

"Carhenge" (detail).

The site, visited by 80,000 people a year, is now run by the nonprofit Friends of Carhenge, which does not charge admission; the grounds are open all day, every day.

The Friends no longer have resources to expand the site and have put it up for sale for $300,000. If the group does not find a buyer, President Marcia Buck said the Friends will continue to care for it, including maintenance of these non-moving vehicles. Unlike Cadillac Ranch, when parts fall off, they are put back in place.

“The damn things break down even when they are struck in the ground,” Buck said.

In December, when I was buying Christmas presents at a wonderful local upscale gift shop that doesn’t usually carry Art-Eco products, I was surprised to see clocks, brooches and a mirror made with discarded metal bottle caps.

Almost since the invention of the “crown cork” in the 19th century, bottle caps have provided an inexpensive and abundant source of art supplies once they’ve been separated from the beverage container.

Bottle-cap art has been popular since the 1940s, because they were inexpensive and relatively plentiful. We are now seeing more modern artists experimenting with bottle caps as recycled materials have become almost mainstream.

L. "Bottle Cap Basket" made from bottle caps c.1940. Photo courtesy of The Ames Gallery. R. "Bottle Cap Basket/Sculpture" handmade from bottle caps, gold paint, metal armature with lid bottom. From coastal Georgia. c. 1940-60. Photo courtesy of the Acacia Collection.

Clarence and Grace Woolsey began making bottle-cap figures in 1961 when they were employed as farmhands in Iowa,–reportedly to make use of a gallon of bottle caps they had accumulated. Over the course of a decade, they created several hundred sculptures. Discouraged by lack of public interest in their work, the couple stopped making them and stored them in a barn owned by Grace’s brother. The figures were discovered 20 years later when the farm was auctioned in 1993.

"Untitled Figures" by Clarence and Grace Woolsey. Photo courtesy of the American Folk Art Museum.

In the late 20st century, painter and web designer John Boak has decorated hand-built kitchen cabinets in his mountain cabin with bottle-cap medallions. The proliferation of microbreweries has provided caps in a wide array of colors which he stores, by color, in old soda bottles.

John Boak's bottle-cap cabinet medallions. Photos by John Boak.

Want to try your hand at this?  Boak shows the rest of us how to do this on his website.

Greg Warmack, aka Mr. Imagination, is a contemporary self-taught artist who worked as a street artist before he was shot during a robbery. After waking up from a coma in the hospital, he had a new vision and began working exclusively with found objects. Now his work can be found in private collections and museums throughout the world.

"Bottlecap Figure with Mirror" by Mr. Imagination. This figure is two feet tall and has an elongated mirror in its center. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

In addition to creating found art and sculpture which is exhibited throughout the country, Michelle Stitzlein teaches workshops for children about creating sculpture from bottlecaps, and other found materials. Both facets of her career require large quantities — more than any one person can provide. “90% of my caps are donated from family, friends and strangers who have heard about my work with kids,” she said. “They do take up a considerable area of studio space. Maybe 16 feet.”

Stitzlein's students show their work made with plastic bottlecaps. Photo by Michelle Stitzlein.

There few “how to” books about creating art with caps.  Stitzlein has written two.  Her newest, Cool Caps!, designed for teachers, parents and children, contains 7 projects made with recycled plastic bottle caps. It is available for sale on Lulu.