ZANESVILLE, Ohio -- John Taylor-Lehman became an artist after a full career as a public school science teacher. He found an unlikely medium for his artistic expression: beer caps.
The Zanesville artist has made a name for himself with his unique mosaic depictions of dogs, people, landscapes and more, formed out of beer caps nailed together on boards. But the unique pieces shouldn’t be mistaken as crafty side projects. They’ve been displayed in galleries, museums and shops all over the state.
A few portraits made by Taylor-Lehman are on now display in Cleveland at Fiddlehead Gallery, 12735 Larchmere Blvd.
“I don’t paint well and I don’t draw well. But I can put colors together,” Taylor-Lehman said. “As I was exploring this medium, I thought, ‘I’ll do what real artists do. A landscape, street scene, still life, portrait…’ Sometimes, I’ve succeeded.”
The artist, who retired from teaching in 2013, started focusing on beer-cap art five years ago. He was inspired from a time that he lived in Brownsville, Texas, admiring folk art in the Mexican border town. In Brownsville, local artists created toys and artwork out of found objects. They would string together caps to create snakes with carved heads and tales.
Taylor-Lehman tried making the snakes, too. Then he found smashed caps that looked like fish scales and bird feathers, and made other animals.
Over the years, he has collected thousands of bottle caps. They have allowed him to find new shades and colors for more detailed pieces and even portraits of people. Friends, family & local community members all donate bottle caps to the cause. Taylor-Lehman said he regularly finds bags of beer caps on his porch or at his local recreation center for him to pick up.
“There are a lot of beer drinkers who are suffering for me,” he said, laughing. “Once people saw what I was doing, friends saved them for me.”
Taylor-Lehman has so many contributors that he doesn’t need to source caps from bars, he said. He receives bottle caps purely from individual donations, favoring unique craft drink caps because they use a greater variety of colors and shades.
When he puts together a mosaic of bottle caps, Taylor-Lehman avoids painting the caps, instead using the colors that are already printed on the metal. He organizes his thousands of beer caps by color in bins in his studio.
The artist is proud of his eco-friendly art form, and takes it a step further, re-using wood scraps to create frames and canvases for the portraits. He said it’s a facet of the story behind his art.
“When people are looking at artwork, they don’t want to just buy a piece of artwork, they want to buy a piece of the artist,” Taylor-Lehman said. “They want to have a story that goes along with it. That resonates with people about folk art -- using what you’ve got, recycling.”
He said the message circles back to his work teaching. Taylor-Lehman used to teach classes about conservation and recycling.
Another connection between teaching science and making art? Creativity.
“Some people are really puzzled how I could go from being in the sciences to being an artist,” he said. “It’s really just about creativity. Scientists are very creative, they’re trained to see connections where other people haven’t seen connections. That’s what an artist is trying to do.”
You can follow Taylor-Lehman’s work, including upcoming exhibitions and commissions, at his website. He also regularly updates his Instagram account with examples of his work.