Other Projects Section Title

Leeds Pop Art

Finished “Leeds” artwork.

What

A 1.62 metre long sign made out of 427 plastic bottle tops.

When

October 2022.

Why

Four years earlier I’d made the “Minge/Minger” artwork, but I still had lots of caps left over and I still carried on collecting them. I would probably have had more amusement from making another rude word, but I thought I’d just go with “Leeds”

The “Minge” artwork in its brief period as the more acceptable “Minger”.

Development & Progress

Unlike when I created the Minge piece, the Black Script (top) font didn’t look any good to me for the word “Leeds”. I tried different typefaces out but nothing was just right, so I used a combination of fonts and thickened up the styles. The “L” is a font called “Great Vibes” (Middle) but the rest of the letters are in “Alluring” (bottom).
Previously I’d I taped together 27 sheets of A4 paper to make the big letters, I now have a fairly large format printer so this makes light work of big letters.

I printed the letters in different coloured outlines on the back of an old Newcastle pub map to save time and effort.
I used a stitch picking tool to pierce dots along the printed outlines. (This photo is from the minge production though).
The letters after being cut out and having the corrugated edges covered up with many, many pieces of masking tape.
I’d devised a basic framework to attach the letters to.

Building the frame was a bit faffy though.
The frame completed and letters screwed on.
The big cardboard word and frame were painted on the front and back.

I separated out bags full of collected bottle tops into tubs of different colours. Some colours are much more scarce than others.
Before any gluing, I spent some time distributing a loose range of colours
The gluing completed. There are 203 lids on the “L” alone.

A brief pose outside in the sunshine.
The artwork on my living room wall, opposite the other bottle top art.

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