As labels go, he’s kind of a pop star

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This article was published 16/01/2021 (2073 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It would be fair to say Glen Zelinsky is Manitoba’s most prolific pop artist.

That’s because his work — photographs taken on his smartphone, often featuring his kids — have appeared on more than 200,000 bottles of soda pop throughout North America.

Zelinsky, a media buyer and accountant with Winnipeg ad agency HR AdWorks, has had his photos selected for five labels by Jones Soda Co., famed for using customer-submitted art on every bottle.

He’s defied the odds in the sense only about one per cent of submitted photos make it through the vetting process and end up showcased on a bottle of Jones Soda, also famous for its array of quirky flavours.

“I wouldn’t consider myself a photographer,” says Zelinsky, 41, who lives in Niverville with wife Kelly and their three children. “I’m just a guy with a smartphone. I’ll see something and snap some pictures of it.

“Submitting the photos to Jones Soda has become a bit of a hobby for me. I’ve probably submitted between 200 and 210 photographs.”

Asked if he considers himself a pop artist, the ad executive laughs.

“I don’t know. It’s fun. It’s cool,” he says. “If somebody wants to call me that, I’m good with it. The thought that somebody could go out and get my bottles is pretty cool.”

He’s definitely not in it for the money, because there isn’t any to be had. As for glory, the pop labels feature the photographer’s name and where the picture was taken.

“You don’t get paid,” Zelinsky says. “You get the honour of having a photo on a label. It’s fun to try and find the bottles locally. When you send a picture in to the Jones website (jonessoda.com) if they like it, it goes through a second round of voting and then it becomes a label. It’s exciting. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

His latest image to make the grade — it appeared on bottles of Blue Bubble Gum pop in 2020 — featured a scenic road-closed sign on the outskirts of Niverville.

“My wife and I were out for a run in the evening and I just thought the sign looked nice against the sky. It attracted a lot of attention locally because it was a local shot.”

His first brush with pop stardom came in 2008 when a shot of his then-six-month-old son Lexan was chosen for bottles of orange & cream soda. “He’s sitting there in overalls with his hand on a suitcase and he’s crying,” Zelinsky recalls. “I think he was just getting impatient.”

In 2013, Jones selected an off-the-wall photo he snapped during a camping trip in the U.S.

“It was like a no-smoking sign,” he says. “It was basically a stick man squatting in the woods with a circle around it and a flash through it — no pooping in the woods, basically.”

Label No. 3, featured on bottles of green-apple soda in 2015, showed his daughter, Briella, then about four, at the Hi Neighbour Festival in Transcona chatting on a banana as if it was a phone.

His fourth label appeared on bottles of cream soda in 2018 and featured his son goofing around with a corner flag at a youth soccer game.

“The interesting thing with that one is it came out around 2018, but I’d submitted it years earlier,” he notes. “We thought the time had come and gone on that picture. It sat around for a few years before getting picked. I thought you might have a six-month window, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.”

When an image makes the cut at Jones, the photographer gets a letter of congratulations that contains a few copies of the label, but that’s about it, other than the thrill of seeing your work in a cooler at a local convenience store.

“Going back to my first label, we were excited,” Zelinsky says. “My heart probably started pounding. The next day we drove to as many gas stations as we could to try and find some. I found a lot of them at Starbucks.

“We’ve got a lot (of bottles) saved. Some we drank and some we gave to family members. Some has just kind of piled up. My family thinks it’s cool. They get a rush from it, too. The same with our friends.”

While he loves the art on the bottles and the fluorescent colours inside, some of the unconventional flavours can be hard to swallow. Like this columnist, he tasted Jones’ Thanksgiving Dinner pack in 2006, which featured flavours like turkey and gravy, mashed potato and green-bean casserole.

“I thought the green-bean casserole and the turkey and gravy were brutal,” he says with a laugh.

Jones’ vice-president of marketing, Maisie Antoniello, says Zelinsky is one of a hardcore group of customer-photographers in North America who submit a steady stream of images to the 25-year-old craft soda firm.

“We’ve had some people send more, but he’s definitely right up there,” Antoniello says from Seattle.

“I see his submissions all the time. We have a gallery that’s open to the public. I think he’s a great photographer. He’s got a really unique perspective.”

The record for most labels likely belongs to an Arkansas woman who has made the grade about 40 times.

“The things that tend to resonate are slices of life,” Antoniello says. “Because our labels are generally black and white, gorgeous sunsets don’t work.

“We do get a fair amount of submissions from Canada and Winnipeg. I’ve heard it’s the Slurpee capital of the world.”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca