Budweiser Bottle Cap Folk Art Salmon Mosaic

 

Budweiser Bottle Cap Fish, 2005
medium	Bottle caps (Budweiser, Bud Light), tin cans, stainless steel nails on plywood substrate
size	12" x 35.5" x 1.5"
	SOLD . Email me if you are interested in commissioning a fish in this style. Reproductions will vary, but will be as close as possible. Made to order in 2-4 weeks.

 

Here's a lovely red and silver Salmon mosaic to kick off the weekend, hand-crafted from genuine Budweiser and Bud Light Bottle caps!

Perhaps you've heard about the recent scandal in Manhattan fish markets, in which the New York Times discovered that over two thirds of the salmon being sold in the city was farm-raised? Fish stores passed off farm-raised salmon as wild creatures while marking up their prices to double the going rate for domesticated fish. Shame on them!

I can assure you that the salmon pictured above is made entirely by hand, by myself, using only the finest authentic plywood, nails and bottle caps! Unlike farm-raised salmon, which takes its lovely shade of red from food coloring, this mosaic fish's deep red reflective hue is entirely natural, determined soley by the choice of brand.

Now, I still wouldn't suggest that you put this fish on grill— I think you'd find that the plywood was somewhat flavorless and the caps a mite too crunchy— but if you were to hang it above the grill, now, that would look right sharp! As for the question of wild or domesticated, I feel this bottle cap salmon strikes a nice balance: it obviously speaks of the wild life, fishing and drinking, tall stories and tall necks, but it can also look quite lovely hung in a domestic setting, whether a kitchen, dining room, bedroom or hallway. And, well, the beer caps are domestic, of course.

Thanks to Seth Godin's Liar's Blog for the scoop on bogus salmon in NYC:

Salmon Is A Lie.
Today's New York Times tested wild salmon, sold for up to $29 a pound, from eight different fish stores in Manhattan. It  reports that less than 25% of all the salmon tested was actually wild. The rest was farm-raised, which goes for half the price when the seller is honest.

That means that the vast majority of people who buy wild salmon in New York get the psychic benefit of believing they are eating something even better than than "ordinary" salmon. But it also means that they're being deceived out of their money.

PS do you know why farm-raised salmon is such a lovely red? It's artificially colored. But the color makes us think it's fresher, and thinking it's fresher makes us thing it tastes better. So it does.