Last fall, Oscar Olivares completed what he said is one of the world’s largest ecological murals made entirely out of bottle caps, in Guatire, Venezuela.
It’s 385 square meters, made out of 400,000 bottle caps and took about three months to complete, according to the 26-year-old visual artist from Caracas.
The endeavor would not have happened without community investment — residents of Guatire and neighboring towns collected over 1 million bottle caps for the project and also helped him complete the mural.
In the process, Olivares was able to educate residents on the importance of recycling. He said that there is no real education or policies about living a sustainable lifestyle, so his bottle cap projects have led to more people wanting to recycle and be part of his work.
The World caught up with Olivares to learn how he does it and how fighting climate change is a community effort.
Carol Hills: Oscar, you started your career as an illustrator. Were you already interested in bottle caps as a way to make art, or did you think of them when you started thinking about pointillism and how to replicate that?
Oscar Olivares: Well, it was a mixture of a lot of things. I received a proposal from a municipality in Caracas, and they had a lot of bottle caps they had collected, but they didn’t know what to do with them. They wanted to make something with art, but they didn’t know anything about what could be done with that. And they told me about that. At first, I was thinking about it, but, you know, I wasn’t too interested in the project until I went to this museum in France. At the first moment, I thought we were just going to make one mural. When I returned to Caracas, I just took a lot of bottle caps, threw them on the floor, and said, ‘If I can make an eye, we can make everything with bottle caps.’ This is the kind of art that when you are very close to it, you just see the bottle caps of the brands, some bottle caps [are] very ugly or very dirty because they come from the trash, you know. But when you walk a few steps far from the mural, you can see all the art. So, it was a result of a proposal from this municipality, but also because of this visit to the museum that changed my mind about it.
Walk us through the process of planning a mural. How do you know how many bottle caps you’ll need? How many different colors? And how do you design them?
The first [thing] I need is the size of the wall. With the size of the wall, I know how many bottle caps. In one square meter, you need 1,100 bottle caps. With that, I begin to make the design of the mural. In the design, I have to think about what kind of colors I’m going to find to make these kinds of murals. Because, for example, in Venezuela, you can find more than 16 different tones of blue. That’s not common in other countries. For example, in Mexico, you will find more tones of green.
Now, one of your murals, you say, is the largest eco mural in the world, and it’s made completely out of bottle caps. Tell us about it.
Yeah, that’s a mural that is in Guatire. It’s a town that is 30 minutes by car from Caracas. [The mural] has more than 400,000 bottle caps. In three months, the community of Guatire collected more than 1 million bottle caps for this mural; we have even bottle caps for more projects in the future. It was an amazing experience. I thought it was going to take us more than three months, but the people were so willing to help us. There were days when more than 100 people volunteered to help us with the mural.
And what is this mural design of?
We have a lot of things because it’s very large — 90 meters long. We have the Parranda de San Pedro, which has some people dancing with flags and colors. Then we have four macaws; they’re very beautiful birds with a lot of colors. [They’re] very typical in Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia and the Amazon. After that, we have the troupial, Venezuela’s national bird. We have a landscape of the mountains of Guatire, and at the end of the mural, there is the planet Earth because I think this kind of art is not just something for Venezuela, for the kids who are making it, but for the world.
When people recycle bottles in the US, they tend to throw out bottle caps. I’m wondering, is that the case in Venezuela? And is your art, too, kind of a way to tell people, ‘No, don’t throw out those bottle caps, save them, and we’re going to use them for art.’
Yes. Yes. It’s very interesting because, in Venezuela, there are very few policies about recycling and very [little] information about how to recycle. There are a lot of people who want to recycle more, but they don’t know how to do it. And the murals have been a very good way to collect the bottle caps in every place we go. For example, there are, and there have been murals in Caracas [where] people from another state have sent the bottle caps to help us in the mural.
Do you have any future eco murals planned?
It’s very interesting and exciting because I plan to make the first eco-mural in the US. I’m going to announce it very soon. We also have plans to make some in Panama, Italy and a lot more in Venezuela. We have maybe more than 10 murals confirmed for the next two years. The most special thing is that it’s not made just by an artist. It’s by the people who collect the bottle caps. That is really taking consciousness about the Earth and recycling.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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