What is Sand Art?

_Elsa_

‘For decades if not centuries, beaches around the world have witnessed countless children demonstrating their skills in the art of building sand castles, in every shape and size. Indeed armed with a bucket and spade, most children can put up a sand castle in no time at all. However, building a sand castle is merely one type of beach art: there are several others, including sand brushing, sand sculpture, sand architecture and sand painting. Most of these types of art involve modelling the sand into a form of relief sculpture, or even a freestanding statue, by removing sand from the emerging artwork.

Sand painting is different, in that the sand painter typically creates the artwork by adding sand. Sand architecture is probably the most demanding of resources, as some sand buildings use as much as one ton of sand in their construction. This whole new genre of visual art is, like body painting or graffiti, gaining in popularity around the world as people try new methods of self-expression. Annual competitions are held in South Carolina, Florida, Hawaii, Scheveningen (Holland), Weston-super-Mare (UK), Pera (Portuguese Algarve), and Goa, to name but a few venues. One might say that sand art - like body painting, or ice art - has become the new postmodernist art of the 21st century.

Sand Architecture - Although this includes child-size sand castles, it also encompasses far larger and more complex types of architectural design, such as cathedrals, scale-models of famous buildings or skyscrapers, canals, tunnels and bridges. As in sand sculpture, these architectural structures may be reinforced, internally, with pieces of wood or other material. See also: Architecture History.

Sand Brushing - As the name suggests, sand brushing is the practice of creating relief shapes by brushing away the surface grains. It is commonly practiced where the sand is especially fine or dry, or in situations where dryness is important, such as street performances. Animal and human shapes are popular in this genre.’ (Source)

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