Artist Mary Ellen Croteau: Making Art with Plastic Bottle Caps

I get excited when I discover artists who create amazing art using unconventional materials.

Chicago, Illinois artist Mary Ellen Croteau is an artist with a cause. She uses plastic materials such as plastic bottle caps and plastic bags to create her work, demonstrating the vast amount of plastic waste that is polluting our environment.

Croteau recently constructed a self-portrait using a multitude of bottle caps to create a Chuck Close inspired work. She implements smaller bottle caps set inside larger ones to create the Chuck Close affect. Her piece is titled Close. All I can say is WOW!

I am always thinking of new projects for my middle school students. Croteau has inspired an idea I have for a school-wide project for Middleton Middle School. As many of my projects this will be vast and very involved. I will be asking the Middleton community to help me in collecting the massive amount of bottle caps needed for my vision. I can hardly wait to get started.

So the next time you are about to throw away the cap to a container, please think about our upcoming project. You will be contributing to a worthy cause, helping the environment, and being a part of art in the making. I appreciate your support!

She currently works with non-recycled plastic waste, in an effort to demonstrate the huge amounts of  trash we are consuming and sending into the environment.

Mary Ellen Croteau is an artist whose work directly addresses the absurdities of social norms, and lays bare the underlying bias and sexist assumptions on which our culture is constructed. She currently works with non-recycled plastic waste, in an effort to demonstrate the huge amounts of  trash we are consuming and sending into the environment.She currently works with non-recycled plastic waste, in an effort to demonstrate the huge amounts of  trash we are consuming and sending into the environment.