Beer can house has ultimate aluminum siding

Houston Chronicle:

Call John Milkovisch a man ahead of his time.

No one talked about recycling or reducing their carbon footprint back when Milkovisch started covering his house with beer cans in the 1960s. And folk art was something you might find in Appalachia or Latin America, not a working-class neighborhood near Memorial Park.

Today, Milkovisch's creation is celebrated as one of those quirky, only-in-Houston experiences unknown to many natives but a draw for tourists from all over the world. Its $202,000 renovation will be unveiled Friday at a party billed as the Beer Can Opener, and it reopens to the public next month.

But what, exactly, is the Beer Can House?

"It's so many different things to so many people,'' said Stephen Bridges, who works for the Orange Show Foundation for Visionary Art, which owns the Beer Can House and has overseen its renovation. "To some people, they instantly recognize it as a piece of folk art. To others, it's just a house covered in beer cans.''

And that's OK.

The Beer Can House is, after all, an homage to individual vision, although Milkovisch, who died in 1988, might have preferred to call it an homage to Texas Pride and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Or a way to avoid painting the house.

Decide for yourself. People will be able to see it up close when the house reopens March 8, one of the few remaining bungalows in a neighborhood now filled with expensive, three-story townhouses. Docents will be on hand between noon and 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, showcasing what more than 40,000 beer cans and other whimsical additions can do for a house. (The house will be open by appointment, as well, and available for rental to groups of 25 or fewer.)

There are garlands made of pull tabs, the tops and bottoms of beer cans and cutouts from the sides of cans, all hanging from the eaves. That shaded the house from the harsh Houston sun, reducing Milkovisch's electric bills. The small yard is covered in concrete slabs, dotted with glass marbles. Just a way to get out of mowing the lawn, he insisted.

The mailbox and fences are covered with cans, and wooden sculptures are studded with metal letters — AMEN, reads the top of a wooden ladder — and elaborate cutouts.

"John Milkovisch never thought of himself as an artist," said Julie Birsinger, project manager for the Beer Can House. He was, instead, an upholsterer and a beer drinker.

But Birsinger describes his work as "very intricate. Very well thought out. Very well executed."

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This is sort of an "only in Houston" house, because of the city's lack of zoning. Even in Houston's other neighborhoods deed restrictions would have prevented the art work. In my old neighborhood in Clear Lake you could not even change the trim color of your house without the neighborhood committees approval. The interior of the house was off limits to Milkovisch's art work. His wife made him drink and decorate outside. Today you would have to wonder whether he would be celebrated for his recycling efforts.