Canadian mosaic artist Jeffrey Adam Meszaros, the man behind JAM Bottle Cap Art, is becoming widely known for his creative mosaics of notable musicians and popular figures—from John Lennon to Jerry Garcia to Anthony Bourdain and beyond—made out of discarded bottle caps and nails.
While he now makes his living creating elaborate, life-like bottle cap art, he got his start on this path not from the “art” side of the equation from from the “bottle cap” side: as a bartender in Edmonton, Alberta back in 2008. “I saw that these caps all had these cool colors and cool logos,” Meszaros told Forbes in a 2024 profile. “It pained me to throw them out. … I didn’t know what I would do with them, but I knew I needed to save them.”
He eventually decided to use his cache of caps to make a mosaic of John Lennon, embarking on a trial-and-error creation process that took six years to complete. Although Meszaros has no formal art training, he told Forbes for an April 2024 profile, “I’m a doodler and I was an actor and I have a naturally creative mind. At the same time, I’m analytical, hard-working and I persevere.”
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His second piece, a commissioned portrait of Joe Strummer from The Clash for a bar in Edmonton, took him just a few months to complete. He never looked back.
Among the pieces JAM Bottle Cap Art debuted this year was a 5ft. x 5ft. mosaic of late Grateful Dead guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia comprised of more than 7,000 bottle caps. He even worked in some notable Easter eggs: On one of the thousands of caps included in the portrait, which features an image of a red hand on a white background, he used white-out to erase the middle finger in an homage to the guitarists iconic handprint.
These days, Meszaros creats his bottle cap mosaics full-time. As Forbes noted, he keeps roughly half a million bottle caps in storage at all time, from which he can select specific colors and shades to make his creations seem as realistic as possible. He constructs the pieces on wooden backdrops using a nail gun as his primary tool. “I really get connected with each piece as I work on it,” he explained. “I will do a deep dive into my subject. When I did a portrait of Anthony Bourdain, I listened to all of his audiobooks and a bunch of podcasts and that directed me and informed the portrait.”
While it appears from his various posts that he was not a full-blown Deadhead prior to taking on this project, his immersive process seems to have turned him into a fan. As he wrote in one Instagram post about the Jerry mosaic, “I’m officially a #DeadHead – after listening to over 100 hours of [Jerry Garcia] and the [Grateful Dead] while assembling over 7,500 bottle caps to create this portrait of Jerry, I can confidently say I’m on the bus.”
Related: MLB Announces Jerry Garcia Tribute Nights Around The League
Watch Jeffrey Adam Meszaros create his Jerry Garcia bottle cap mosaic below. Head to his Instagram to view more photos and videos of his other portraits including depictions of Jim Morrison, Michael Jordan, David Bowie, Harry Styles, Larry David, Alice Cooper, Freddie Mercury, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and many more. For more information on JAM Bottle Cap Art, head here.
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The post Watch This Guy Make A 5′ x 5′ Jerry Garcia Portrait Out Of 7,000+ Bottle Caps [Video] appeared first on L4LM.
