Paul Villinski collects beer cans from the streets of New York, as a way to recycle and reuse them for his art series “Birds and Butterflies.” Beautiful work!

These pieces explore themes of transformation and recovery through the metamorphosis of crushed beer cans from the streets of New York into flocks of realistically crafted butterflies.

Who leaves these crushed beer cans – forlorn evidence scattered in the streets of the city? I take these “dead soldiers” – every one of them once raised to someone’s lips – and breathe new life into them, changing them into images that suggest the possibility of change itself. A kind of conceptual unity develops between materials, process and imagery: my practice in the studio mimics the act of transformation that butterflies symbolize everywhere, in all cultures.