Seadrift: Beach Art

It's no accident that a lot of driftwood art seems to represent life by or on the sea: boats, fish, whales, dolphins, mermaids and so on. I am no exception to this. The first thing I ever made with driftwood was a fish and then I made another one. Since then I have made giant squid, more fish, a sea turtle, a miniature shark (see last post) and some boho surf shacks. These surf shacks are pleasing to make for being relatively simple and quick. A lot of what I make involves several stages over many days as I build up to the final form and mostly this time is waiting for glue to dry. I like to use Gorilla Glue because, although it takes a few hours to dry completely, it is very strong and things are stuck fast. Reverse side The surf shacks involve several similar length pieces of driftwood, painted or not, then glued together and onto a piece of wood that will have the fixing attached (I like to use brass hooks onto a length of pallet wood which is free and easy to collect almost eve...

When I walk the beach, eyes on the ground, I am waiting for something to catch my eye. Here on the south coast, the beaches are shingle, made of stones and only at mid to low tide does the sea recede enough to reveal sand. The stones range in colour from dark grey to brown to white. In the last twelve months, I have begun to notice that there is a wider diversity of material - living and dead, man-made and natural - than I had previously realised despite living here for the last seven years. I know now that the black plastic-y pods that appear to have four 'arms' and commonly known as mermaid's purses are the seed sacs of skates,. The pale spherical ball, light as air, and made of joined cells I now know are the seed sacs of the common whelk, a sea snail whose shell I have picked up and brought home many times. I have learnt the names of different seaweeds, noticing which ones appear in higher quantities at different times of year and I have begun to learn the names of diff...

It is now winter and the days are short. Although many of us are divorced from the religious occasion of Christmas, I think many of us enjoy decorating our houses with light. When sunrise is at 8am and sunset before 4pm, then we all need as much light as possible. With that in mind, I decided to find a way to make some driftwood stars. I combed the beach for sturdy lengths of driftwood, and then took them home and put them in piles of similar lengths. I wanted a 5-pointed star and aimed to use contrasting pieces of driftwood in terms of colour and texture. Assembling them meant experimenting with how each piece could lie so that the end points could be glued or, occasionally, joined with a small nail or screw. I soon learnt that it is best to attach the brass-plated hook for hanging the star before assembling but this is a mistake I commonly make with any of my driftwood creations: being so excited to make something that I forget to anticipate the need for attachments. Once the glue ha...

Above is a picture of Shoreham Harbour and my house is hidden by trees near the top left corner. I swam in the harbour waters today because I feel a deep connection with the water. As the temperature of the sea is falling, I now emerge with a cold tingle on the skin which is, in many ways, better than swimming in mid-summer. But this blog is not about sea swimming. It's about driftwood art. My connection to the sea extends to the beach eco-system and the plants that grow there, the seaweed that is left as a high tide mark, and the wood and other objects that the sea deposits.  Seagift: driftwood is a free resource and beautiful in its own right. Often it is the shape of the wood that determines what I will make from it. Bone Shark This is the smallest piece I have made. It is a piece of bone that resembles a shark's head mounted on driftwood and metal. It is only about 4 inches wide and 3 inches high. Small is definitely beautiful.  At the other end of the scale is some of the...