Castles In The Sand: A Lover's Guide to Beach Art

Beach: the final frontier. Sand, shells and seaweed. The epicentre of idle creation. Once you’ve finished playing bat and ball, once you’ve swum until your eyes bleed, then there’s nothing left but to express yourself through sand. What underground tube station or fashionable New York gallery can boast a range of crazy artwork to rival low tide at Cobo on a summer’s evening?

When I talk about beach art, I’m not talking about the freaks who make life-size sculptures of the Simpsons on Brighton beach for daytime TV, and I’m not talking about the sell-outs chasing the big cash prizes in the Rocquaine Regatta sandcastle competition. I’m talking about people who write their name in the sand in twenty-foot letters just so everyone sitting at the Rockmount knows it. I’m talking about people who dig holes so deep that doctors end up writing ‘Why such a big hole?’ on children’s broken-leg diagnostic reports.

Beach art is limitless and can take many forms, but generally, it’s divided into three styles:

1. Lettering: Writing in the sand, usually by trailing the corner of a spade behind you. Often your name, ‘Hello’ or something offensive about someone you know.

2. Hole digging: It’s all about going big. How wide? How deep? Tunnels?

3. Sculpture: Generally castles, occasionally stuff like mermaids. Sometimes sculpture is interactive (think racing cars and boats). Sometimes it takes a more multimedia/kinetic angle (half buried people).

Beach art is a widespread and highly respected form of expression in island communities like Guernsey, and with good reason. It takes mad ability to operate within the limitations of the beach. It’s not an oil painting, so you’ve only got until the tide comes up, and you’ve got to know your sand. If you haven’t got what it takes then your castle is going to collapse, your letters will fade and the holes you dig will subside. Whilst being one of the most technically challenging art forms around, its also one of the most accessible. Most islanders don’t have the facilities to make bronze statuettes or silkscreen prints, but anyone can get hold of a bucket and spade.

Sadly, in spite of the massive following beach art has at a local level, and the fact that thousands of people passionately pursue it as a way of life; it remains disputed as an art form in the UK and much of Europe. Many of the greatest diggers, scrapers and shapers remain at best ignored and at worst despised by the mainstream art scene, and it’s not uncommon for respected artists to dismiss sand castles as ‘just messing about’, accusing beach artists of ‘increasing erosion’ and ‘causing long shore drift’.

Despite this, the future of the discipline is bright. The majority of beach artists don’t seem to care whether they make it big or not. They’re not looking to cross over, blow-up or break-through, and it seems most would prefer a virgin patch of sand and a spade to the Turner Prize.



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