when people throw their discarded chewing gum onto the pavement I can take their rubbish and make it into a form of Art [Music] my name is Ben Wilson and people call me the chewing gum man and for the last 19 years I've been transforming rubbish into art I live in London but I have worked throughout the world doing environmental art but there's something particular about the chewing gum art I it makes me really excited because I can make something very small a thoughtless action and change it around and I'm literally taking something that's thrown away
and making it into something beautiful so it's a form of recycling the picture is very much determined by the subject matter and and what's happening at the time when I'm working so it could be anything from two hours well an hour to two a day sometimes two days depending on the complex of the image I have a blow torch which dries the paint off and then a lacquer as well which dries very fast I don't want to do something which is going to have a detrimental effect and I think we we need spontaneity in our
environment because the more mass-produced things become the more soulless I I believe I think the one thing I love about the London is the uh um diversity of all the people so the pictures I've created are from people from all walks of life and so celebrating the connectivity of people I've been very upset by uh certain elements of society or Western Society issues of consumerism certain problems environmentally can be sold from centralized government but also I think it's the sum total of all our actions that create the world that we live in so each time
a person's a spat out gum on the street I'm taking one thoughtless action and then changing it around and it's some total of all our actions that make the world a better world foreign [Music]
