When an artist creates a beautiful work of art and at the same time brings awareness to an important issue, it’s worth talking about.
This is exactly the case with Oscar Olivares from Venezuela. He teamed up with local environmental organizations to create a stunning eco-friendly mural made entirely from recycled bottle caps. Oscar hopes this project brings awareness to the ecological issues that are present in the city of Caracas and beyond.
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The entire mural spans 45 meters in length and measures 3.5 meters at its shortest point and 7.25 meters at its highest point.
It’s truly an impressive work of art.
It can be found on a wall of a small square, Plaza Escalona in El Hatillo Municipality in Caracas, Venezuela.
The mural actually took about over two months to complete.
Oscar was invited by the ONG OkoSpiri environmental organization to collaborate on the project with them.
The organization Movement in Architecture for the Future was also involved.
The mural involved plastering over 200,000 various plastic caps and container lids on a wall in a small local square.
Before the project, the square was largely abandoned and turning into a landfill.
In addition to raising awareness of ecological issues facing the city of Caracas and all of Venezuela, the project also aimed to revitalize the abandoned area of El Hatillo neighborhood.
The mural was one way to bring some life back to this neighborhood.
The most challenging part of the project, according to Oscar, was the whole preparation and collection of the bottle caps.
The bottle caps had to correspond with the colors needed for the mural.
This mural is one of the largest ecological murals in South America and the first of its kind created in Venezuela.
Oscar is hoping to make more in the future.
The project began by applying a coat of white paint over the wall.
A grid was placed for the design, then the clean caps were applied all over.
The mural starts off showing the city of Caracas at night with an “arepa” moon.
The arepa is the most famous food for people in the country, whether they are rich or poor.
The sky inspired by Van Gogh represents the connection between Earth and outer space.
And the most important aspect of the mural are the four macaws flying around Caracas.
At the end of the mural, you can see an Araguaney, which is the national tree of Venezuela.
There’s also the inscribed name of the mural, “Oko-mural”, inspired by ONG OkoSpiri.
The artist hopes to create more eco-friendly murals not only in Caracas but the rest of Venezuela, as well.
He also wants to do some in countries outside of Venezuela to spread awareness of environmental issues.
For now, the city of Caracas has one amazing sight that people are surely glad to see.
And I bet this square sees a lot more visitors than ever before.
Wow, I had no idea such an amazing mural could even be created using bottle caps.
That seems pretty impossible but indeed with hard work, it became possible after all.
