Welcome back, you meticulous meter readers. Last week, we navigated the urban landscape using parking meters as our compass, finding creative inspiration in the rhythms of time and space. Did you capture the silent stories of those metered moments with expressive art or a haiku to match the ebb and flow of cars around City Hall? Perhaps the exercise resulted in a wave of civic pride, which you channeled into a creative letter to the editor about parking challenges. Even if all you did was dance on the hood of your car in an expired parking space as a performance piece, I hope this creative exploration of spacetime was an enjoyable trip.
This week, we're shrinking our focus to something small enough to fit in your hand but crammed with multi-sensory potential: a bottle cap. Did that word alone evoke the satisfying pssst or pop of a cold bottle of Coca-Cola? Can you see the beads of moisture, maybe even feel the warm sun on your face as you tilt your head up to take a drink? Hear the metallic click as the pop top hits the countertop. Apologies, I think I just recalled a commercial like it was my lived experience!
My own authentic fascination with bottle caps culminated in a playful art project at the Garcia Center for the Arts last year titled “Recap.” Built in the parking lot, the installation featured a collection of found bottle caps and a whimsical display with various bottles placed under a sheet of plywood with cap-size holes cut into it.
The premise was simple, yet delightfully absurd: toss the bottle caps and try to land them squarely on a bottle top embedded within the structure. The inherent impossibility of the task was the point – a playful commentary on chance, skill, and the belief that we can do anything if we just tried hard enough. The clatter of the caps, the vibrant colors scattered across the display, the laughter of those attempting the impossible feat – it was a multisensory experience I created, and it all started after I noticed a bottle cap on the ground.
The sheer variety of materials, shapes, and colors of bottle caps provides a rich grab bag of options to support our effort to bring more creative activity into our life. They are miniature artifacts of our consumer culture, waiting to be repurposed and reimagined by you. Each cap carries a trace of its former contents, a ghost of flavors and brands, a hint to its origins and fate. Maybe you’ll find a few imprinted with a joke or an inspiring quote.
Ready to bring that spirit of playful exploration to our own effort to put several minutes of creative contemplation into our day? Great, give one or more of these prompts a spin, and see where you land:
1. “Pop Sounds”: Collect a variety of caps and experiment with the sounds they make when dropped on different surfaces (metal, wood, fabric, pavement). Record these sounds and layer them to create an abstract soundscape or a short piece of percussive music.
2. “Hands On”: Without looking, explore the edges and surfaces of a few different bottle caps. Notice the sharpness, the curves, the embossed details. Use these tactile impressions as inspiration for a blind contour drawing or a small sculptural piece focusing on texture.
3. “Bottle Free”: Gather a collection of bottle caps and other small found objects. Use the bottle caps as a unifying element to create a miniature assemblage sculpture. Consider how the colors, textures, and shapes of the caps interact with the other materials.
4. “Animated Cap”: Use a small number of bottle caps as characters or elements in a stop-motion animation. Tell a short, simple story using their movements and arrangements. Consider the sounds the caps make as they move.
5. “Game Cap”: Inspired by “Recap,” design your own "impossible" game using bottle caps. What are the rules? What are the objectives? What kind of playful frustration or unexpected joy might it evoke? You can describe your game in writing or create a small-scale model.
As you engage with these exercises, consider the journey of each cap – from factory to beverage to potential art supply. Think about the sheer number of these metal or plastic disks that circulate through our lives, often unnoticed. By giving them a second life through creative exploration, we not only engage our imaginations but also participate in a small act of mindful repurposing.
This column was written with the help of Google’s Gemini Advanced, a powerful generative AI writing tool.
