On June 15, 2023, Flag Day, Antigo Visual Arts (AVA) Recycled Art Committee celebrated the Flag At Rest installation at Bradley Funeral Home with a dedication to celebrate the project and the artist, engineer, and contractor involved in creating the piece.
“When I started seeing the bottle cap art going up in the community, my first thought was how cool, to bring awareness that not all plastic is recyclable. Even though it is not recyclable, it does not need to be garbage, it can be repurposed into something beautiful.” said Jessica Olson of Bradley Funeral Home, “We feel incredibly honored for it to be the flag, as we honor veterans all the time here, and that is very important to us. Thank you for allowing us to be part of the project.”
The Flag At Rest, made entirely of recycled or repurposed materials, was created by Artist, Vicki Eldridge, along with her husband Joel who worked as the contractor on the procedure, and Eric DeHart as the engineer. The pole is a recycled light pole from Antigo’s Sharon Motors car dealership. The panels themselves had edging flaws and were rejected for sale. The housing for the thrust bearing was from an old butcher block, the PVC was from an auction, and there were pieces that needed to be made from scrap to finish things off. Caps donated from the community decorated the piece. Flag weight is about 70# with 1675 screws, 13 bolts, 3350 caps, and close to 200 hours of labor by the artist, contractor, and engineer.
The AVA Recycled Art Committee consists of a group of artists who enjoy working with recycled materials. The committee was created under AVA Public Art Committee with the collaboration of the Antigo Public Library (APL).
APL houses a receptacle for community members to donate clean plastic bottle caps, along with receptacles located inside Lakeside Pharmacy and Antigo’s Senior Center. The committee collects the caps, sorts, and sometimes drills for use in schools and at local events. The Flag At Rest project was done solely by 3 of our recycled art committee members noted above and we are so thankful for their hard work.
The City of Antigo embraced the plastic bottle cap project many years ago. The unique project has only grown to include art inside and outside APL, murals hanging along Springbrook trail behind Johnson Electric Coil, inside Bradley Funeral Home (with traveling Ethyl) and outside with the Flag At Rest, cap strings on light posts downtown in the summer months, and a prom dress worn by a student at Antigo High School Prom 2023. Special thanks to the Remington Foundation and CoVantage Credit Union.