INTERVIEW ON THE PRICE OF BUSINESS SHOW, MEDIA PARTNER OF THIS SITE.
Recently Kevin Price, Host of the nationally syndicated Price of Business Show, welcomed Benjamin “BENCASSO” Barnes to provide another commentary in a series.
The Benjamin “BENCASSO” Barnes Commentaries
Benjamin Barnes, known as Bencasso™, is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, author, and entrepreneur blending classical training with street-born grit. Raised busking from a converted school bus, he learned early that art feeds both soul and stomach. A violinist, painter, digital creator, and founder of Bencasso Art Gallery (bencasso.org), he bridges canvas and blockchain through NFTs in music, film, and visual art. Influenced by his mother, a gifted painter living with schizophrenia, and refined through formal study and lived resilience, Bencasso™ creates work rooted in tradition yet wired for the future.
Benjamin Barnes, known as Bencasso™, is a painter, musician, and digital creator shaped by a childhood of busking from a converted school bus, selling art to survive. Taught early by his mother—a gifted painter living with schizophrenia—he later refined his craft through formal study and mentorship. Blending traditional technique with modern innovation, his work lives at Bencasso Art Gallery (bencasso.org) and expands into NFTs, music, and merchandise through Skeletonichi.com and Bencasso.us. Rooted in resilience and disciplined creativity, he bridges canvas and blockchain, turning lived experience into lasting art.
Reintroducing Benjamin Barnes (Bencasso™)
If you’ve heard me talk business before, you know I believe art is not a hobby. It’s an economy. It’s survival. It’s legacy.
But what you might not know is that I grew up in a converted school bus in the mid-1970s. My father would pull over to busk. My brother and I played beside him. While he sang and strummed, we sold my mother’s paintings and sketches on the street to get gas money and groceries. No gallery openings. No wine and cheese. Just asphalt and honesty.
That’s where I learned something priceless: art is currency.
My mother was a painter—brilliant, haunted, living with schizophrenia. She was touched by madness in a way that was both luminous and dangerous. I inherited some of that fire. I’ve wrestled my own storms. But where chaos tried to scatter me, I chose discipline. I brought my own structure, my own training, my own grit to the canvas.
I later studied painting with Ilan Laks in 2004, refining technique, composition, and color theory before life took another sharp turn—forming Deadweight and eventually surviving a catastrophic accident that I’ll share more about later in this series. Let’s just say: when you rebuild your body, you rebuild your art too.
Today, my visual work lives at Bencasso Art Gallery, online at bencasso.org. It’s a space where classical draftsmanship meets modern symbolism. Something little known? Many of my digital works begin as physical layered studies—charcoal, oil, ink—before they’re digitized and reinterpreted. I don’t “start digital.” I translate. The brush comes first. The blockchain comes later.
And yes, I mint NFTs—not as a gimmick, but as provenance. As permanence. My music, films, and visual art exist on-chain because artists deserve ownership in the digital age. The starving artist trope? Retire it. We’re building sovereign creative economies now.
My merchandise platforms—Skeletonichi.com and Bencasso.us—extend that ecosystem.
Skeletonichi carries the darker aesthetic: Day of the Dead, supernatural mythos, the Ghost of
Shunichi universe. Bencasso.us carries broader art-based merchandise. And while
BencassoMedia.com is in transition, it still routes correctly—because evolution takes time, and I build carefully.
A big part of that digital evolution has been my collaboration with Peadro, the web architect who helped bring structure to my online presence. Artists can dream big, but someone has to wire the house. That partnership allowed me to scale: multiple brands, platforms, and creative channels under one disciplined framework.
From selling sketches on the sidewalk to selling NFTs globally, the throughline is the same: make the work. Honor tradition. Adapt forward.
Madness may visit the bloodline. But genius? Genius is what you build with it.
And I’m just getting started.
Artwork: Strolling Violinist Why? Available at Bencasso Art Gallery https://bencasso.org/featured/strolling-violinist-why-bencasso-b.html
Literature: “Artistpreneur Economic” How to Make a Living Doing What You Love new book https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FFB5JK6C Dallas Gazette News Review https://dallasgazettenews.com/2025/08/28/the-artists-survival-guide-a-reviewof-how-to-make-a-living-doing-what-you-love/
Loosened Associations Jazz: Auto-memoir-ography of Music, Mischief and
Madness (Bencasso’s autobiography) https://a.co/d/9JBJWTl Atlanta Post Review: https://atlantapostnews.com/2025/08/24/broken-strings-and-beautifulmadness-a-review-of-loosened-associations-jazz/
Press about Culture Scholar Corporation and Bencasso llc
New York City Independent Partnership of Bencasso LLC and Culture Scholar Corporation 501(c)(3) https://nycindependent.com/2025/09/07/together-intempo-the-symbiosis-of-a-humanitarian-company-and-nonprofit-for-mentalwellness-through-the-arts/
Benjamin Barnes, also known as Bencasso™, is a nationally syndicated radio commentator, musician, author, educator, entrepreneur, and founder of Bencasso™ LLC and Culture Scholar Corporation 501(c)(3). A survivor of catastrophic injuries and mental health challenges, Barnes rebuilt his life through music, art, education, and entrepreneurship. He is a violinist, guitarist, singer-songwriter, grant-winning artist, podcast host, nonprofit executive director, and creator of over 110 recordings available worldwide. Through Artistpreneur Economics™, Barnes teaches creatives how to transform adversity into opportunity, blending streetwise experience, artistic passion, and business strategy with the soul of a performer and the grit of a survivor.
Social Media
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/benjamindavidbarnes
- Facebook: https:// facebook.com/benjamindavidbarnes
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/benjamindbarnes
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