Gum Art by Ben Wilson

Britain painter Ben Wilson painstakingly turned ugly patches of flattened chewing gum on Britain's pavements into art, using tiny brushes, a lighter to quick-drying his work, and clear lacquer to seals it.



“I grew up in an artistic environment where anything was possible. My mother was an illustrator and my father did ceramics as well as painting. When I was about two, I started working with clay. I was always encouraged to go in the direction that I wanted.”



“My work would evolve out of the place in which I was working. Rather than imposing the idea on the place, the idea would come out of the place.”



He developed a technique in which he softens the gum with a blowtorch, sprays it with lacquer and then applies three coats of acrylic enamel.

Gross Art

Halloween is generally viewed as an opportunity to be creative. Maybe you want to try to make an awesome (n gross) art like these?

McDonald's Food Mummy

Artist: Ben Campbell

This 5 feet 2 inches mummy was created out of about $200 worth of McDonald’s food (McDoubles and French Fries) and epoxy resin.



“Ancient Egypt was obsessed with achieving immortality through customs that included mummification and the construction of pyramids. Modern society is likewise obsessed with achieving a from of immortality through our own customs that include pursuing celebrity status and constructing corporations.”



First, Campbell had to make a rubber mold of the mummy. Then he prepared the McDonald's food. "I dried the food out and ran it through a blender."



The artist then mixed that blended formula with clear epoxy resin and pouring the paste into the rubber molds.



"The last part was using the mixture to stick the cast parts to each other and cleaning the sculpture up."



The sculpture aims to show the world "that McDonald's food is so full of preservatives that it will literally last forever."

Images taken from here

Source: Odditycentral, Facepunch

Check his website: www.beneverywhere.com

Chewing Gum Sculpture

Artist: De Eindhovense & SintLucas Art Students

This 4.5m (15 feet) high sculpture of a man with his arms raised made entirely of chewing gum.



Approximately 3,000 students from two vocational art universities (De Eindhovense and SintLucas) in the Netherlands, each chewed on a piece of gum before adding it to the structure - a sign of unity - as part of a campaign developed by international communications agency KesselsKramer.



'Youngsters no longer left their chewing gum under chairs and tables, but used it to create their own work of art.’

Chewing Gum Portraits

Artist: Anna Sophia Matveeva

Anna Sophia Matveeva, from Makiivka, Ukraine creates portraits of celebrities from used chewing gum.



Every one of her artworks use over 1,000 pieces of chewed gum, so she asked her husband, her relatives and some of her friends to help her out. If the donated pieces of gum were hard, they just need some time in the microwave before being stuck on to the canvas.



Anna molded and placed every single piece with her bare hands.

Source: Odditycentral

French Fries Skull

Artist: Christopher Chiappa

Christopher Chiappa has created this amazing skull using McDonald’s french fries.



He photographed himself and calls the diptych “McMiracles.”

The Apex Predator

Artist: Mariana Fantich and Dominic Young

Mariana Fantich and Dominic Young of Fantich & Young have created The Apex Predator series.

It includes a pair of oxford shoes called the "Apex Predator Shoes" with 1,050 teeth dentures glued on the bottom, with two gold teeth at the toes of the shoes on the sole.



There is also a female version that features a pair of Jimmi Choo Empire shoes with 500 teeth from dentures on the sole.



A suit made from human hair with glass eyes as buttons and teeth from dentures as accents, called the "Apex Predator Suit".



Source: roomsmagazine

Placenta Teddy Bear

Artist: Alex Green

Toy designer Alex Green can craf your baby’s placenta into a unique teddy bear.



To make the teddy bear, the placenta must be cut in half and rubbed with sea salt to cure it. After it is dried out, it is treated with an emulsifying mixture of tannin and egg yolk to make it soft and pliable.

Source: inhabitots

Unique Art Made From Bubble Gum

Artist: Jérémy Laffon

French artist Jérémy Laffon created these intriguing sculptures that took 4,000 pieces of chewing gum and three months to make.



The complex geometrical structure stood at almost two metres and was nearly three metres long.



The chewing gum sticks were stacked, piled and assembled. Laffon melted a few so that the towers would eventually fall down.



"It represents a sculpture of frustration and that's why I chose to knock it down by melting a few crucial pieces."



"After melting a few sticks, the work fell down and collapsed slowly."



"I was inspired by the system of matchitecture, where thousands of matches are used to create a sculpture."



"I've always been fascinated by the construction of a house of cards and decided to create a sculpture with a material that hasn't been used before."



"I wanted to use something that was challenging and the characteristics of chewing gum seemed perfect. Chewing gum is unstable and I thought that it would be tough to create a huge sculpture out of this material."



"I tried to complete the design by just using saliva, but that wasn't strong enough, so I had to use glue to make it secure."

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The artist created a floor installation.



Source: dailymail

Check his website: www.jeremylaffon.com/

Artist: Jason Kronenwald

Canadian artist Jason Kronenwald creates these unique celebrity portraits out of chewed pieces of bubblegum.



"Each Gum Blonde is 100% chewed bubblegum on a plywood backing. No paint or dye is used. The colour is inherent to the gum - the mixing of colour takes place inside the mouth during chewing using an endless variety of flavours made by an endless variety of companies. Kronenwald has a dedicated team of chewers and prefers the texture of Trident. However, he does not chew gum himself unless he must."



“I mainly need gum that feels comfortable in my hand, that keeps its consistency.”



“These portraits are a commentary on how we consume these celebrities like candy. They affect us immensely because our appetite for news about them is always growing.”



Each portrait is then sealed with an epoxy resin to protects and preserves it for long periods of time.

Check his website: http://gumblondes.com/

Source: digitaljournal

Chewing Gum Sculptures of Maurizio Savini

Italian artist Maurizio Savini uses thousands of pieces of bright pink chewing gum to create these amazing sculptures.

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He said, “The reason I like to use chewing gum is because it seemed to me an amazingly versatile material compared to those used by the traditional arts such as painting. Despite its history of it belonging to popular culture, chewing gum does not have a statute of its own within institutional art. I believe that in my work on this material is redeemed and acquires a capacity and it has an expressive dignity of its own. I work the chewing gum when it is warm and manipulate it with a knife just like some traditional material like clay. The most important step is the fixing of the sculptures with formaldehyde and antibiotic.”

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