Old soda cans are not something we usually associate with delicate flowers. But where other people see trash – recyclables at best – Chicago-based artist Christine Eige sees infinite opportunities. The elegant lilies and roses Eige creates from upcycled soda cans look so real you could be forgiven for leaning in for a sniff of their sweet scent.
Among leaves, this large purple lily not only looks real but also makes you realise that disposable, man-made objects can take on a beauty that almost rivals that of the natural world.
This picture shows one of Eige’s upcycled works alongside its functional, everyday origin – the omnipresent coke can. This not only highlights the artist’s talent but also seems to be the very embodiment of the phrase, ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’.
And though these soda can flowers are certainly beautiful to look at and easy to maintain, a world without real plants would be unbearable – not to mention the harbinger of doom for human and animal life! But to stop ourselves getting too gloomy, we can rest assured that Eige’s creative recycling will keep at least some soda cans out of landfills.
“The focus of my artwork is to demonstrate the impact we, as a community, have on our planet. My artwork is here to prove a point, send a message, change some minds, and be aesthetically pleasing at the same time,” she says. We can certainly vouch for the aesthetically pleasing aspect!
Soda pop plants need no water or sunlight and will last forever. A bit of dusting may be required occasionally (or perhaps some rust-proofing in humid climates!) but that’s about it. We’d bet if you mingled one of Eige’s creations among your real flowers on the windowsill, your friends probably wouldn’t even notice, and certainly not at first glance.
Take a moment to look and see if you can identify all the different soda cans the artist has used here. There’s Strawberry Sunkist for the pink flowers; Diet Dr. Pepper for the white ones; Mountain Dew for the leaves; and Orange Crush for the orange flowers. Eige also used Sierra Mist cans, Sunkist Lemonade, Coke Zero, Monster and even the odd beer can. Can you find them all?
This lily duo demonstrates the amount of detail Eige pays to each of her creations – from the stigma, the receptive tip of the style, to the stamen, the flower’s reproductive organ. No prizes for guessing that the lily is one of the artist’s favorite flowers, but as we’ll see, she works wonders with roses too. We wouldn’t be surprised if Eige had even included metallic roots below the soil just to make her compositions more realistic.
This Coke tiger lily was a commissioned piece that Eige did for a couple into anything Coca-Cola. Reworked as petals, the aluminum cans sure look better after than before!