We've been out and about these last few days, firstly to Liverpool, past the Tall Ships moored in the docks, to see the Klimt exhibition, here:
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/gustavklimt/Then to London where we met up with a most amazing guy, Ben Wilson, aka The Chewing Gum Man.
Walking along the street in London, you can see horrid little pieces of dried up chewing gum, that people have chewed, spat out, and then they have been trodden on and dried up. Ben Wilson transforms them into minature pieces of art. They are absolutely fantastic, well painted, each one has a story, and they are dotted everywhere, but untill you have seen the first one, you dont notice them, they are so small and look like small pieces of litter from a distance.
After talking to Ben a couple of times, somthing clicked, and I realised that we both grew up in the same area, know alot of the same people, and I remember, 20 or more years ago, walking through our local woods and coming across enormous sculptures made with trunks and branches of trees, also by Ben, he used to create them at night in secret, and then people would have wonderful suprises finding them in the woods, no one knew who had made them, or where they came from.
We asked Ben if it was OK to post about him on our blog, and Toby took some pics of the chewing gum art, on his mobile phone, which he will post here sometime soon to show you.
In the meantime have a look here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rahid1/sets/286517and read here:
http://blakkbyrd.blogspot.com/2007/12/chewing-gum-man.htmlWhat do you think?