Home	Artwork	Biography	Curriculum Vitae	Texts	Contact	News	Links
Petro Max'd | 2009 | Plastic Bottle Caps | 38" Dia. x 122" Tall (96.5 Dia. x 309cm Tall)

Petro Max'd is the seventh plastic bottle caps sculpture.  It was commissioned by the Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina, SK for their Sherwood Village Library branch.  The Concern and Evian bottles, had originally shown there in an exhibition titled, Abnormal Growth curated by Amanda Cachia with Twyla Exner and Tricia Middleton.  I had recently moved to Estevan, SK to take up a Curating job and one of the first things I noticed was the oil derricks.  Estevan is a small city in South-east Saskatchewan right in the middle of the Bakken Play... a massive multi-billion dollar oil field encompassing lower Alberta, Saskatchewan, South-western Manitoba, North Dakota and Montana. I had wanted to progress these sculptures in some form while simultaneously referencing the first bottle cap sculpture, made in Regina in 2001 (a Pepsi Twist bottle that has since been recycled into other works).  Pepsi had just released their Pepsi Max line so it seemed like perfect timing.  Since plastic is a subsidiary of petroleum, I made the sculpture's base seem like it was melting into a puddle of plastic and oil and changed the title into Petro Max'd (short for petroleum).  The label references the increasing shortage of fossil fuels and our reliance on them, but also gives the viewer a renewed sense of where our everyday materials originate.

Permanently Installed at the Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, SK

© Griffith Aaron Baker