Making Landscapes from Bottle Caps

Artist Heidi Fowler makes dreamscape landscapes out of recycled junk.

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"No. 100.22.009" by Heidi Fowler, 2009

Courtesy Project 4 Gallery

"No. 100.22.009" by Heidi Fowler, 2009

The benefits of recycling apply not only to everyday, functional objects, but to art as well. An exhibit entitled _____scape at the VisArts Kaplan Gallery in Rockville, Md., explores the “semantic origins of landscape as a condition, shape or idea rather than the depiction of scenery.” Heidi Fowler, who is one of 11 artists featured in the exhibit, investigates the notion of creating landscape using repurposed waste. Her piece “plasticscapes” is made of an array of transparent plastic bottle caps, each of which is filled with scraps of junk mail and other printed materials. Similar to the photo-mosaic effects seen in murals comprising many smaller images, Fowler’s work may be experienced at two levels: at the micro-scale, one encounters rows of precisely placed artifacts, while at the macro-scale, a blurry field emerges, evoking a large vista of a cloudy summer sky. Through Sept. 9. • visartsatrockville.org

About the Author

Blaine Brownell

Blaine Brownell, FAIA, is an architect and materials researcher. The author of the four Transmaterial books (2006, 2008, 2010, 2017), he is the director of the school of architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

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