FEATURE: Blackhawks fans put the cap on a multi-year long project

The idea that sparked a multi-year project that would eventually become a work of art began as most grand ideas in college do -over some cold beers with a group of friends.
"This idea came to me while in graduate school when my roommates and I finally started drinking beers that didn't come in a can," said 28-year-old Adam Stack. "We seemed to constantly be recycling bottle caps and one day the idea just came to me. It was a house full of architecture students so the creative juices, figuratively - and probably literally - were flowing."
The result? A giant Chicago Blackhawks logo containing more than 2,000 bottle caps of varying colors - a tribute to a couple's unwavering support of their favorite hockey club.

"One random day, probably during a Hawks game while drinking a beer, Adam suggested to me that we should make a Hawks logo out of bottle caps," said Adam's wife Deborah, a high school counselor and Blackhawks super fan.
"I said I was on board and we started collecting bottle caps."
Beginning in 2014, the caps came from friends, family members and random bars from the couple's travels.
Adam - who currently works at an architectural firm downtown - printed a logo made with his auto-CAD design software. They used that template to identify how many of each color they would need and how to start arranging them.
"We had no idea how big this project would be when Adam had first created it in his mind," said Deborah.

The two began collecting caps in 2014, at first storing them in one collective bag. They eventually began dividing them into Ziploc bags, assorted by color. Over the next two years, they set up camp in Adam's parents' basement on top of a ping pong table, laying out each piece one by one, following Adam's print out.
"The piece contains somewhere in the ballpark of 2,200 bottle caps," said Adam. "Really, the only reason it ended up so big because it had to. With each cap essentially being a pixel, the logo needed to be large enough to read correctly. The project from its conception to completion was probably four years with a hiatus or three in between."
"We decided on the final colors of the feathers first, sometimes buying beer based on the color of the cap to be able to complete each feather," said Deborah. "We were able to connect the entire orange feather - nothing else was connected at this point - before we were asked to move the project out of his parent's house. We threw all the caps into their own colored bags and they sat in those bags for about two years. We continued collecting the caps, which diversified our options and allowed us to be more [selective] for putting together the face and the headdress."
After the two got married in November 2017, they decided it was time to finish the project.

"It took about four months to connect all of the feathers and an additional three months to connect the face and headdress," said Deborah. "By May 2018, the entire logo was assembled, but it took an additional five months to figure out how to hang and mount it."
The hardest part was connecting all of the caps. So how did they do it?
"Painstakingly," said Adam.
"We thought about this for probably at least half a year," said Deborah. "Initially, the thought was to glue each cap to a piece of plexiglass or similar material. When we calculated that the final project would be about 6'x5' we had to consider how we would be able to move it. Adam came up with the idea of 'chain mail' because it would be flexible and we could easily transport it out of his parent's basement."
They bought a mini hole punch and a bag of jump rings, which are jewelry hoops that can be pulled apart and pushed back together. Using a couple pairs of Adam's mom's old suture pliers, they pulled apart each jump ring, then bent one side toward the middle.
"I was in charge of making all the jump rings into the lowercase "b" shape and Adam would feed the open end through the hole punches of two bottle caps then bend the open end toward the middle, trapping the two caps together," said Deborah.

"My wife became the expert at this process and probably has the calluses to prove it," said Adam.
After all of the years of hard work, the piece was finally finished.
"We had to reorganize our living room to clear enough wall space for it, so the plan is to keep it there for a while," said Adam. "We may have to plan our future home searching around it."
"When we eventually move into a house we are hoping to have a bar in the basement and hang it in that area," added Deborah. "It's definitely a conversation piece."
The Stacks have enjoyed many Blackhawks memories together over the years. Adam is a life-long fan, who was introduced to the sport and the team by his father, a former season ticket holder at Chicago Stadium. Deborah became a fan in college and has cheered on the team feverishly alongside Adam since 2008.
There's no bottling up the Stacks' affection for the Blackhawks. Their loyalty is hanging in their living room, and eventually their basement bar.