What-have-I-been-missing Wednesday . . .

   

One of my great pleasures in life 

is seeing the things that people love to make or do.  

I often wonder how they came to the activity in which they invest so much of themselves, and the role their creative outlet plays in enriching or even saving their lives.  That's one reason I enjoy doing shows.  Because I love to see the work that artists are passionate about, and the way that work reveals them.


Outsider artists have always been of particular interest to me.  These are people who work so far outside the mainstream that one need never question the motive behind the art.  They create because they gotta.


That's why I was delighted this week
when Literacyhead popped up on my feed with a story about  
Ben Wilson, the British artist who paints on chewing gum.

 Ben Wilson at work

The spit-out-on-the-sidewalk kind.

He's been painting gum full-time since 2004, and has created more than 10,000 paintings on pavements all over the UK and parts of Europe.

Here's one  link to some of his work on flikr, and here's another:

Ben Wilson's chewing gum art

First he heats the gum with a small blow torch.  Then he coats the gum with acrylic enamel.  He finishes each piece with a clear lacquer seal.  Each painting takes from 2 hours to 3 days to produce.

He doesn't consider himself to be a graffiti artist.  This is probably partly because he is not painting on the structure itself, but rather on just the gum.

And another Ben Wilson creation

^{It reminded me of these particular} 

^{vintage news clippings:}

   

^{Unfortunately no footage exists of the painted cobwebs. . . 
but she made it to the SMITHSONIAN??!!}

^{Several years ago, my own daughter Lindsay 
created a body of work} 

^{that grew out of spills and stains:}

 

  

this coffee mishap . . .

became this drawing 

(Lindsay Hinckley, 2009) 

 ^{and this one . . .}

 

^{became this} 

^{(Lindsay Hinckley, 2009)}

It makes me feel like I'm missing 

about 99.7% of the possibilities 

that exist in everything around me . . . 

. . . and come to think of it, I did see a nice clump of cobwebs in the corner of my living room ceiling the other day.  

Thank goodness I didn't do 

anything about it . . . yet.

(procrastination rewarded again!)