Bob Benson, mirror artist

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Twelve years ago when Bob Benson saw a single strand of mirrors in a friend’s yard blowing in the breeze, he remembers thinking, “Boy, that has possibilities.”

Since then, Benson has turned those possibilities into mirrored creations of all shapes and sizes, from jewelry as small as a locket to the 21-foot mirror tree outside the Visionary Art Museum where more of his artwork is on display with artist collaborator Rick Ames.

Benson’s home sparkles in a kaleidoscope of colors. “Mirrorages,” a combination of paint and colored mirrors on a plexiglass base, adorn his living room along with several other designs. In other rooms, two infinity mirrors one and one-half inches deep create the illusion of much greater depth. Outside, two mirrored trees made with rows of one-half- to four-inch-long mirrors glued back-to-back dangle in varying lengths from the metal branches and jingle like a chorus of crystal glasses. The basic building blocks for Benson’s work include a cutting board, a glass cutter, a pair of convex pliers, quarter-inch thick mirror, 40 lb. fishing filament and a highly adhesive glue.

Benson is passionate about his art and shares his self-taught technique by giving workshops at his home and at the Visionary Art Museum. “Many people who come to the workshop say they don’t have creative ability. They find out they’re wrong; they create beautiful things & they can see how easy it is to do it.” For more information, go to his website, ShinyHappyThings.net.