City Art Works, located at 701 Main Street, is presenting the colorful and eclectic work of Ben Ware July 13 through August 31.
Ware has lived in Minden since he was in high school. He always enjoyed making art, but it wasn’t until multiple sclerosis, a chronic disease that affects the nervous system, made him unable to work that he discovered the depth of his love for art.
“When I became disabled, that’s kinda when my art career began,” said Ware. “I’ve always drawn and toyed around with drawing things and sketching and painting a little bit, but nothing like I have now, and it’s just been my release from being disabled. I don’t know where I’d be without it, to be honest with you.”
Ware is a big experimenter when it comes to art. He doesn’t stick with just one medium, and he likes to combine mediums in ways that most people wouldn’t think to do.
“I like just creating stuff. I want to do sculpture. I want to do pottery. I like doing things with resin. I like painting. Anything that’s creative and gives me an outlet, that’s what I gravitate toward,” Ware said.
His works in resin are particularly eye-catching. When asked how he thought to use resin as an art medium, Ware said. “My first experience with resin came when I was working with my dad on the riverfront in Shreveport. We redid all of the bars on the Shreveport side of the riverfront. In that process, we did a place called Banana Joes, and we poured probably 30 gallons of epoxy on that job. It was a bar top that we had to stain with this water-based acrylic ink. And I got to using that stuff, and I thought, ‘man, that stuff would be gorgeous over artwork.’ It’s something that I decided to incorporate with my alcohol inks. I did some testing to make sure that it would actually hold up and was not going to lift the ink off the paper but, once I had one that was done, that’s kinda what I’ve gravitated toward. A lot of my work has been with epoxy here lately.”
Ware loves to mix media and does not feel constrained to work only in classical mediums.
“I do all kinds of stuff,” said Ware. “I’m big into flowers and bugs. I love bees and butterflies, that’s a big thing in a lot of my art. And I like to get out in my yard and take pictures of the flowers, especially when I find a bug that I can capture in the art. Then I’ll take it and digitally manipulate it and then I’ll print it off on either canvas or a heavy paper. And then I resin over the top of it. I do all types of mediums. I don’t like to keep myself in a box; I like to just create.”
Ben Ware has shown his work previously at City Art Works, Big Sun Studios in Shreveport, and Critical Mass, and he has work on display currently at Dr. Thomas’ in Minden and at the Agora Borealis in Shreveport. His work is bright, beautiful, and something to behold, and it will be on display at City Art Works through August.