Andoni Bastarrika has created these amazing sculptures with sand and you probably mistake for real animals.
Artists have the ability to find their muse and inspiration among everything. Andoni Bastarrika uses sand for his creations while most artists use papers and colors as their medium to depict their art. He targets a much more challenging medium and he creates animals. He has found a lot of inspiration in the sand and has created sculptures of animals that can be easily mistaken with the real ones from bulls, dogs to horses.
The artist said that his journey with sand started in 2010 summer when he went to the beach with his two daughters to Bored Panda. Bastarrika’s first sculpture was a mermaid and he said that the ‘fluidity of his hands’ is his gift when asked how does he make such life-like sculptures. The artist said, “They knew what they were doing. I devoted myself to developing this gift and have spent the last 10 years doing just that.”
Bastarrika wrote in a separate post on his Facebook account, “The sand fascinates me because no matter how you look at it, it will always teach you things if you are willing to learn. In order to create a sculpture, an unthinkable number of sand particles participate, hugging each other tightly through humidity, so that someone could model their union. And once the artist steps back, its piece will remain at the mercy of nature, meaning that sooner or later the wind will dry them up and release each particle, slowly consuming all the individuality and authenticity.”
He has a lot of reason as to why he is attracted to sand and he said, “To create a beautiful world, we should all embrace each other just as tightly. There are a lot of reasons why I like to make animal sculptures as well, but one is the fact that animals are free spirits. Humans can reflect and learn from them. Then, there’s the nudity they bring with themselves to this world at birth which they keep until their death. That nudity -at least to me – symbolizes freedom, the essential ingredient to being able to truly live. Human ‘overdress’ to survive in a lot of ways. I have never made nor will I make an animal with a necklace or chains. I prefer to embrace their freedom, power, and wisdom through beauty rather than a form of suffering.”
He creates these amazing life-like sculptures, that at first, he piles up the slightly wet sand and begins giving it shape and the kind of movement will make it look life-like. After that, Bastarrika uses a sharpened stick and a feather to deepen that expression and imbibe life into it. He also has art materials like ashes, coal powder, clay powder, stone powder of different colors, and glass shards to enhance the beauty.
He said, “The time it takes to create one piece largely depends on its size. “The elephant, for example, took me 2 days, while the horse and the bison took 12 hours each. The dogs, which were smaller, needed about 6 to 8 hours.”
Here are some of his works below:
