We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brian Benham a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Brian, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I have been fortunate enough to have worked on many meaningful projects. However, the ones that stand out the most are the ones where I can tell the client’s story and add to it. One client wanted me to build a shelf to display his model train from his childhood. As the design progressed, I knew it couldn’t be just any shelf. So I created a shelf with a tunnel shape cut into the supports so the train could pass through.
Another client was a Vice President of a major airliner. He had acquired a compressor out of a jet engine from a Boing 727. He wanted a unique way to display it, and his wife wanted a coffee table. So I built a coffee table, suspended the jet engine in one end, and created a river of glass coming out of the engine.
Through these projects, I can build pieces of art that become part of the client’s story and incorporate something special from their lives.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

The work I strive to do is to design furniture so that it is not just a piece of furniture. Instead, it can stand on its own as a work of art. To do this, I use various materials: wood, stone, glass, and metals. Each has a unique learning curve and subtle nuances to discover how the material needs to be worked. I think this is what I enjoy the most about working with different materials. Those nuances force you to pay attention, and discovering them is exciting and keeps you going. Looking back to when I first got started in woodworking, those small discoveries were exciting. There is nothing like taking a long smooth shaving off a board from a hand plane, especially after you put in the work to learn how to use it and sharpen it. So to be a woodworker, in a sense, you have to be part metal worker as well. Or at least have an understanding of how tool steel needs to be worked to be able to sharpen it.
As I started to understand the different materials and their limits, that understanding opened up new design possibilities. However, I keep asking myself what else can I do with these materials. Sometimes, the craftsman in me dictates the design direction, as I know I can successfully build it a certain way. Sometimes, the artist in me dictates the design direction and forces me to learn new skills to fabricate the design.
I think this constant evolution of learning and trying new things has become what I am known for; I am the guy you call when you want something built that is a little out there.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I don’t know that there is such a thing as a “non-creative,” although I have met many people that believe they aren’t creative. I think it is just a skill that they have not dedicated time to learn, and that is ok. Often times to learn how to be creative, you have to take the uncomfortable path, put yourself out there to be judged, and receive feedback, positive, negative, and the downright disrespectful and unproductive criticism. Not everybody wants to open themselves up to that kind of criticism. However, I think a creative’s work is a derivative of their environment, and to fully experience your environment, you have to consider the opinions and actions of the people within it. You never know when someone is going to say something or suggest something that will take you down a new path in your work you had not considered before. Those are the Eureka moments.

You just have to know for your own sanity how much of your work to put out there to be judged at one time or when a particular piece you have been working on is ready to be shown publicly.

That is probably one of the hardest things about sharing your creativity with others, often times we are over-critical of ourselves because we see a deeper vision than what we were able to create. But that goes back to my previous statement that the excitement is in learning the craft and the nuances of each material and skill set we work with.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I have always said, when looking for new clients, that I want to create cool and interesting things for cool and interesting people. So I think the mission and goals driving my creativity are to keep learning new things, keep experimenting, and explore new ideas and designs. By doing so, I am bound to find cool people that will be interested in my work and the journey I am on.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.benhamdesignconcepts.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benham_design/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BenhamDesignConcepts
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/benham-design-concepts
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/benham_design?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXO8f1IIliMKKlu5PgSpodQ