Transforming beaches and forests into art masterpieces.
Photo from Jon Foreman – Sculpt the World
Jon Foreman Sculpt the World
Jon Foreman grew up in Wales and was fascinated by the beautiful coastline and forests. He does his sand art on beaches at low tide, and each will only last about 20 minutes before the water starts to wash it away. He collects stones, pebbles, and shells and arranges them in artistic patterns. His carefully planned pieces can take up to six hours to complete. Sometimes he does not use any objects and only draws in the sand to make his patterns, and those pieces can be enormous. He also works in forests with leaves.
He is on Instagram and Facebook.
He supports himself by selling prints and taking commissions.
English sculptor Andy Goldsworthy was one the first land artists. Born in 1956, he is an English sculptor, photographer and environmentalist who makes site-specific sculptures and land art.
He uses twigs, snow, ice, stone, flowers, pine cones, and thorns. Some of his works are permanent and others will show the effects of time and nature.
Goldsworthy has many books with photographs of his work, and two documentaries have been made about his work. They are available on Amazon Prime and are called Rivers and Tides, and Leaning Into the Wind.
Photo by Andres Amador
Andres Amador is a San Franciscan, born in 1971, who has worked in the sands of California, Mexico, and New Zealand. He began drawing in beach sand with a stick while on vacation in Hawaii. The first piece he created was in 2004. In 2014 his passion became his full-time job, and he makes a living selling prints, creating commissioned art, and conducting workshops that help others experience and create their own beach sand pieces. The designs are always different, he works on about 30 different beaches and has created hundreds of short-lived works of art. His pieces usually take two hours or less to complete. Some works are geometric, and others are organic and free form. He has created commissioned work for businesses and individuals in the U.S. and Europe.
He has a website with more photos of his art.
Robert Smithson is an American artist whose work has influenced many artists and thinkers.
He died at the young age of 35 in a small plane accident, but his earthworks, photographs, drawings, paintings, films, sculptures, and collages are still admired, collected, and exhibited. He is best known for his earthworks.
His wife, Nancy Holt, has been the steward for his estate. His most recent exhibitions were in 2018 at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, and in 2020 at the Marian Goodman Gallery London and the Galerie Marian Goodman in Paris.
The work pictured above, Desert Storm, is an enormous land art installation dug into the sands of the Sahara Desert in 1997. It was a two-year collaborative effort between installation artist Dinae Stratou, industrial designer Alexandra Stratou, and architect Stella Constantinides and was meant as an exploration of infinity against the background of the largest desert in Africa.
Twenty-five years after its installation it remains visible in satellite images. See it here on Google Earth.
An earlier ASE article on Sand Art:
