20 Beautiful Animal Sculptures Created Using Seashells By Anna Chan
For a lot of people, the quarantine and all the free time that came with it served as a great opportunity to try out all sorts of new hobbies. And while some tried their hand at recreating paintings or becoming amateur beauticians, New York-based artist Anna Chan decided to hit the beach and start creating amazing sculptures of animals using sand and seashells.
In an interview with DeMilked, Anna said she started creating the sculptures exactly one year ago during the COVID-19 lockdown. “There was no where to go so I went with my daughter to our local beach in Long Island, New York two to three times a week,” explained the artist. “I had been out of work for a few months and was starving for an outlet to put my creativity at work.”
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Artist Anna Chan discovered a new hobby during the lockdown – creating amazing sand and seashell sculptures of animals
Image source: Anna Chan Art
Anna has been a jewelry designer for 20 years and says that she’s used to creating on a daily basis. “So when my hand hit the sand it was almost electric. I just wanted to make something,” said the artist.
Image source: Anna Chan Art
In the beginning, Anna’s inspiration was marine life, before eventually evolving into nature as a whole. The artist says that there’s so much to draw from the limitless beauty out there and that the seashells help her ideas as well. “For example the sheep, I had collected lots of moons snails as they are very abundant on Long Island beaches but I had no idea what to use it for. One day I saw no on my Instagram feed another artist paper cut out of a sheep with paper curls for the fur. I immediately saw how the moon snail resembles the curly sheep fur and that’s how that piece came together,” explained Anna. The artist also added that her materials and nature work hand in hand to form her pieces.
Image source: Anna Chan Art
“In some of my small works I have used shells not collected locally since I was still experimenting with the style and technique for my work. But my large works are all shells collected here in Long Island,” explained Anna. “Each beach has its own unique collection of shells so I’m pretty familiar now where to stock up on what I need.”
Image source: Anna Chan Art
The artist says that some of her early works took around 6 hours from collecting shells to completion. However, moving her workspace into her garage allowed her to be more meticulous, and nowadays her sculptures can take between 3 days to a week to finish, depending on the difficulty. “So far the lion has been the most technically challenging piece I have made because it’s a high relief so securing the shells to the sand takes a steady hand and lots of patience otherwise it falls right off,” explained Anna.
Image source: Anna Chan Art
Anna says she’s looking forward to exploring more with sand as she still sees lots of possibilities. “As an artist, I want to push the boundaries of the preconceived notion of what a medium can and can’t do. I spent a bulk of my artistic life searching for a connection to a material and I’m ecstatic I finally found it at my local beach during such trying times,” concluded the artist.
See more of Anna’s intricate works below!
Image source: Anna Chan Art
Image source: Anna Chan Art
Image source: Anna Chan Art
Image source: Anna Chan Art
Image source: Anna Chan Art
Image source: Anna Chan Art
Image source: Anna Chan Art
Image source: Anna Chan Art
Image source: Anna Chan Art
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