The name kind of says it all. Milkovisch used every single part of a can to create and cover the modest family bungalow where he and his wife Mary raised their family. Over two decades, Milkovisch, who worked as an upholsterer for the railroad, used a linoleum knife and tin snips to cut the bottom and top of cans, flattening the panels, and using the pull tabs, said Cody Ledvina, archivist and grant officer at Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, which has managed the Beer Can House since buying it in 2001.
Milkovisch made the cans into flat sheets and applied them like aluminum siding. Covered with an estimated 50,000 aluminum cans, the house is a shiny, folk-art beacon. While Milkovisch didn’t consider himself an artist, he used the cans, concrete, a marble collection, linoleum and more to create his iconic space. Over the years he covered large planters, the patio, walkways, the front and back of the house and fences. In addition to the siding sheets and stepping stones, he made garlands from wire and pull tabs and created curtains from the aluminum cans, in a meditative process that was “almost monk-like,” Ledvina said.
