Snow art... sand art.... sand calligraphy

Someone shared a link to this fabulous 'snow art' created by Simon Beck>> here

& here's his facebook page. Aren't they fabulous?

They are huge, and so intricate...

Looking at these made me think of sand calligraphy by Andrew van der Merwe which had me gazing open mouthed when I first saw them. 

 his 'beachscriber' site is here

he says "The work is usually very temporal, often lasting no more than an hour before it is taken by the wind or the tide. I carve the letters in the sand using various instruments and then photograph them with my Nikon D700. I leave no footprints and the tide leaves me with a clean slate.

"Most of the forms used here draw their inspiration from African writing systems, but in some instances, I have moved on from there and found myself playing with variations of a particular movement - pretty much like a musician might play with variations on a theme.

"I have 20 years experience as a calligrapher but the most difficult aspect of the work remains the calligraphy. Any calligrapher worth his or her salt will understand this. Even wordless writing must have a logic, a system of movement, a poetry."

Actually I still gaze open mouthed....

and so, I was led to Tony Plant's sand drawings>> here

his website is http://www.tonyplant.co.uk

To create each drawing, Plant spends hours on the coastline, using a rake to form lines and circles in the sand. The geometric designs do not last long, very quickly getting washed away by the waves or walked across by surfers and beach-goers. Each fleeting artwork is a site-specific project that the artist has no control over and he says, "I just think of them as non-precious things. Some people get confused about why I do it, when there's nothing left after the tide has washed everything away, but I just see it as a new blank canvas for me to work with."

*sigh*