About the Art of Beachcombing
A passion for seeing beauty in beach wreckage has turned ‘trash’ into ‘treasure’
I began my interest in 3D Art when I took an elective subject with internationally acclaimed sculptor, Inge King. During my first teaching experiences in childcare centers with limited budgets for toys and equipment, I recognised a purpose for recycled household items to be converted into educational play materials for young children, saving the budget and reducing consumerism of mass market toys that lacked creative play value. In 1983, I published a book with Penguin on the art of making toys from recyclable materials. “Toys to Make” sold over 10.000 copies in Australia and overseas, and is available now in most libraries.
Since moving back to the bayside area after years of inner city living, I noticed a significant change in the beaches I had spent so much of my childhood enjoying. I walk my kelpie dog daily and observe the changes in the foreshore associated with weather patterns and storm water runoff. The increase in plastic and man made objects on the foreshore, and the effect of waste flowing into local beaches has been significant.
Over the past 10 years I have directed my creative energy into transforming objects I find washed up on the beach into artworks. I work with natural materials such as shells and driftwood, combined with a variety of found objects and use paint to add colour and vibrancy where needed.
I think of my walks along the beach as ‘treasure hunts’, where the findings are unknown and frequently surprising. What is someone else’s trash is often my ‘treasure’. Wreckage from boats, lost or forgotten children’s beach toys, pier timber, yacht rigging, fishing tackle, are but a few of the flotsam and jetsam items I have retrieved and incorporated into a collage or sculpture.
“I let the object suggest what the transformation should be. I make little change to its’ original shape or form, rather working with it to enhance the natural beauty. It may have once been part of a whole, but after I have rescued it from the beach and seen its’ potential, it becomes something new, reborn, to be appreciated again. That is the joy in the artwork I create. The materials have all had a previous history, a life as a different item, and then they come to me, broken, battered, washed up by the sea, and they have the chance to be something newly created. I try to shape these bits and pieces together, so they can become once again, pleasing to look at and admire. It’s just a different way of looking at things, seeing the beauty in everything, even if it is ‘rubbish’ washed up on the beach, it can be beautiful, all it needs is to have it’s potential realized in recreation!”
A passion for seeing beauty in beach wreckage has turned ‘trash’ into ‘treasure’
I began my interest in 3D Art when I took an elective subject with internationally acclaimed sculptor, Inge King. During my first teaching experiences in childcare centers with limited budgets for toys and equipment, I recognised a purpose for recycled household items to be converted into educational play materials for young children, saving the budget and reducing consumerism of mass market toys that lacked creative play value. In 1983, I published a book with Penguin on the art of making toys from recyclable materials. “Toys to Make” sold over 10.000 copies in Australia and overseas, and is available now in most libraries.
Since moving back to the bayside area after years of inner city living, I noticed a significant change in the beaches I had spent so much of my childhood enjoying. I walk my kelpie dog daily and observe the changes in the foreshore associated with weather patterns and storm water runoff. The increase in plastic and man made objects on the foreshore, and the effect of waste flowing into local beaches has been significant.
Over the past 10 years I have directed my creative energy into transforming objects I find washed up on the beach into artworks. I work with natural materials such as shells and driftwood, combined with a variety of found objects and use paint to add colour and vibrancy where needed.
I think of my walks along the beach as ‘treasure hunts’, where the findings are unknown and frequently surprising. What is someone else’s trash is often my ‘treasure’. Wreckage from boats, lost or forgotten children’s beach toys, pier timber, yacht rigging, fishing tackle, are but a few of the flotsam and jetsam items I have retrieved and incorporated into a collage or sculpture.
“I let the object suggest what the transformation should be. I make little change to its’ original shape or form, rather working with it to enhance the natural beauty. It may have once been part of a whole, but after I have rescued it from the beach and seen its’ potential, it becomes something new, reborn, to be appreciated again. That is the joy in the artwork I create. The materials have all had a previous history, a life as a different item, and then they come to me, broken, battered, washed up by the sea, and they have the chance to be something newly created. I try to shape these bits and pieces together, so they can become once again, pleasing to look at and admire. It’s just a different way of looking at things, seeing the beauty in everything, even if it is ‘rubbish’ washed up on the beach, it can be beautiful, all it needs is to have it’s potential realized in recreation!”
