One of London’s greatest living artists’s work can’t be found in any art gallery but rather on the pavements and particularly one London Bridge.
Have you ever noticed the hundreds of tiny works of art on the Millennium Bridge? They are the work of Ben Wilson, an ‘outsider artist’ who paints the chewing gum stuck to the bridge.
Ben, who calls himself Chewing Gum Man, has been diligently lying on the bridge with his paint and brushes for over a decade now, turning discarded trash into beautiful miniature art pieces.
Ben is London’s Pavement Picasso, a truly unique Londoner who has turned thousands of blobs of chewing gum into exquisite pieces of art.
Ben’s art bypasses bureaucracy and the controlled spaces of galleries, but it’s got him into trouble with the police in the past. In fact he’s not actually defacing private property, just painting rubbish, so he’s not breaking the law.
First he melts the chewing gum with a small blow torch, then he shapes it to the desired size, sprays it with lacquer and heats it up again to transform it into a solid disc. Look out for them next time you cross the river.