As you may have guessed from some of my previous posts, I’m intrigued by the concept of ephemeral art; painstaking effort for the sake of short-lived beauty is so alluring.
Combine this idea with a life of global beach hopping and you’ve got the reality of couple Remy Geerts and Paul Hoggard, artists who together have been constructing sand sculptures at international competitions (yes, sand sculpture competitions apparently exist) and on commission since 2003. I discovered them in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, in which they explain that there are perhaps eighty full-time sand artists and they all know one another. And when not on the international beach circuit:
The couple say they have been inseparable since they met in a Belgian sand sculpture park in 2003. For the past year they’ve lived ‘a simple, sustainable life,’ growing their own organic fruit and vegetables on their farm in the Bulgarian village of Mihajlovo.
‘We like living in our rural village in beautiful Bulgaria, on the edge of the Balkan mountain range. We have 60 fruit and nut trees in our garden, and grape vines. This summer, we did not let a lot of fruit go to waste. We made [preserves], jams, chutneys and sauces.’
I’ll get back to eating my shitty Midtown lunch while working on an Excel spreadsheet in a soulless office building, thank you very much.
Check out more sand art images on the couple’s surprisingly informative website.
