Black Crayon Cafe draws in the crowds

From the The Argus, first published Thursday 24th May 2007.

Remember how much fun drawing with crayons was when you were a child?

Daniel Benians does. Since rediscovering the joy of wax crayons eight years ago, he's been a man on a mission.

He takes a pad and pack of crayons everywhere he goes - pubs, clubs, restaurants and weddings - badgering friends, family and random strangers to express themselves through wax art.

This month, he took his evangelical mission one step further by transforming his seafront flat into the Black Crayon Café as part of the Brighton Festival Fringe.

When The Argus visited, the café was in full swing.

Daniel, a South American tour operator when he's not spreading the waxy word, greeted us with a cup of tea and a plate of freshly-baked animal biscuits.

Some of them had mutated in the oven, but that's OK. At the Black Crayon Café, endeavour is prized more highly than artistic excellence.

His living room walls are a gallery of technicolour postcards, selected more for their imagination and verve than technical perfection.

Coffee tables are crowded with paper and jars full of rainbowcoloured crayons, which Crayola sent Daniel after he wrote to tell them what he was planning to do.

Guests have drawn abstract doodles, landscapes, cartoons, animals and even a risqué scene featuring a pair of bikini-clad lovelies in a hot tub, but people are by far the most popular subject matter. He first started using crayons while on holiday in Southwold, Suffolk. Failing to find a postcard cheesy enough to send to his friends, he decided to make his own.

It would be easy to dismiss his resulting zeal as childish indulgence or a pretentious stab at ironic cool, but his passion is sincere.

He said: "For some reason, adults feel less inhibited about drawing when they're using crayons.

"It's not like when you're doing a watercolour and you have to worry about each brush stroke. Crayons liberate them.

"There's so much that's great about them. They're fun to use, cheap, colourful, portable and you don't need to wait for them to dry."

Among the guests last Saturday afternoon was Dr Justin Rosenberg, a politics lecturer at Sussex University, who brought along his sons Benjamin, five, and two-yearold Joschka. He said: "It's brilliant.

He treats the children and the adults the same way. I would never sit and draw by myself, even though I do it with the children, but after today I might well give it a try."

The next day, in the pub, I chatted with an acquaintance about my activities over the weekend. When I mentioned the crayon café, she laughed. She said: "I've met him.

He was in the pub on New Year's Eve. I drew a Medusa for him."

The word, it seems, is spreading.

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