Ben Wilson’s Chewing Gum Art

It takes Ben Wilson an average of about three hours to create each piece of gum art. If you’re lucky you may even spot him lying on the concrete with his blowtorch and acrylic paints tackling the latest gob of abandoned chewing gum with an intricately detailed mini-masterpiece. Adds a new dimension to appreciating the little things… Ben’s been at it for eight years.

Look down and look carefully. You may be lucky enough to spot one! If you thought Pablo Delgado‘s work was easy to spot, here’s a good treasure hunt challenge for you. Ben’s work is found mainly around North London, especially Muswell Hill and Barnet. Apparently there’s one on Argyle Street W1 where the road bends. There are now a bunch near East India on the DLR where last weekend’s photo exhibition of Ben’s past work was supplemented by a new trail of his gum art.

Here are some photos of the exhibition images followed by a few of my own findings in East India along the way.

Outside, a small trail…lens cap so you can judge the size.

As you’ve probably guessed from these, Ben often works to requests so a lot of them are quite personal.

Have you found any of Ben’s chewing gum art over the past eight years?

If you could have a personally designed piece, what would it look like? Any particular flavour?

LOOKING FOR MORE ON BEN WILSON?

1. A follow-up post on Ben’s work here with a short video 
2. An LLO interview with Ben, part 1 (July 2013)
3. An LLO interview with Ben, part 2 (July 2013)
4. A post about Ben designing a customized piece of chewing gum art for LLO (July 2013)