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Daniel Scott
Daniel himself, made from candy wrappers
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Daniel Scott
"That'll Be the Day" by Daniel Scott
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Daniel Scott
“14 Days” by Daniel Scott
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Daniel Scott
"Are You Serious?" by Daniel Scott
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Daniel Scott
“The Eastwood Staredown” by Daniel Scott
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Daniel Scott
"My First Haircut #2" by Daniel Scott
Fort Worth artist Daniel Scott makes mosaics. His colorful portfolio consists of portraits depicting near-perfect likenesses of everyone from Clint Eastwood to Captain America. But look closely at his work, and you’ll notice a surprising detail — the unmistakable logos of childhood sweets like Tootsie Pops, Dum Dums, and Starburst.
Yes, these mosaics are made out of candy wrappers.
“It’s the most challenging form of art that I’ve done as an individual,” Scott says. “At the end of the whole piece, I find myself at a place where all this labor that I put into it and the final product are something that I’m very proud of. Every single piece.”
It’s a hobby he began in college at the prompting of a professor who advised the young art student to do something better than “bothering everybody.” Scott was studying ceramics and sculpture at the time, but upon discovery of dye baths in one of his classes, he decided to gather a bunch of wax-based Starburst wrappers, airbrush and dye them onto a canvas, and create a mosaic replica of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” His peers loved it, and after that, wrapper mosaics became his thing.
Scott would take a hiatus from mosaic-making, however, in pursuit of a career in graphic design (his day job is working as graphic design lead for TTI, Inc.). It wasn’t until about a decade ago when he decided to pick back up on the art again. As his work ramped up, so did the attention; in 2019, Scott’s mosaics of Marvel Comics characters graced the walls of Vaquero Coffee Co. in downtown Fort Worth — his first solo show in over 20 years.
Scott has since stayed busy with commissions, creating mosaics of celebrities and comic book characters, or even portraits of client family members. He starts by asking the client for several photos of the subject to get a feel for the fine details. Then, he sketches out the image and determines what colors and candy wrappers he needs to make it happen.
“The most challenging part for me is getting the expression correct,” Scott says. “Having that wrestling match, if you will. You have to get exactly what the client or photograph is presenting you.”
The other challenge — working with a color palette limited to the types of candy he has available. Thankfully, 25 years of collecting have resulted in a rather comprehensive selection of hues; some wrappers even date back to the ’90s.
And no, he doesn’t eat all the candy. Some he ends up throwing away; others come from coworkers or his daughters’ Halloween buckets.
“[During Halloween], when my girls were younger, I used to pilfer; I took it all,” he says with a laugh. “They knew.”
Mod Podge glue holds the candy wrappers in place, and to finish off, Scott tops the piece with Liquitex to give it a matte finish and UV protection so the colors don’t fade.
As cool as the finished product looks, Scott admits it takes quite a bit of skill and effort.
“This idea of transferring this type of communication from a photograph that someone dearly loves or really likes this movie star or whatever it’s going to be, to replicate just by looking at it, finding the right colors within that limited palette and getting it right — the way the eyes look, the expression of the face, down to the nose — it is very imperative I match it the best I can,” he says.
Even so, he enjoys the process, with each project presenting a unique set of challenges that consequently leads to new ways to get creative.
“It keeps evolving; it keeps changing,” he says. “There’s not an end to what I can accomplish with just candy wrappers. I keep seeing new things I can do.”
Find Daniel Scott on Instagram @recycled_mosaics and recycledmosaics.net.
