Somerset: The artist combing beaches after storms
2025-01-26
Category: entertainment

It's Friday and most people in the UK and Ireland are battening down the hatches and hoping to stay safe from Storm Éowyn.But one artist from West Coker, Somerset, where the storm is far from its strongest, is waiting by the window for the moment it is safe to go out again.Care worker Dan Wakeman makes driftwood sculptures and the storms provide him with his biggest opportunity, to beach comb for fresh materials."I collect whatever nature brings in on the tide - wood, scrap metal, and I'll collect and dispose of rubbish, too," he said.
Straight after a storm, he rushes to the Dorset or North Somerset coast to see what he can find."A bigger storm will bring you more material than high winds and bring it from further away," he said."In the bigger storms some of the wood that comes in will have been floating on the surface of the ocean for many years."I look at it when I get home and see how it talks to me - it brings a lot of joy."
There is also a therapeutic element to Dan's beach-combing.Getting out into nature, thinking about the raw material of the wood and how it could feature in his artwork helped him recover after losing his father."I'm enjoying the walk and I'm enjoying what I'm finding, and I get an energy buzz from that and feeling connected to the materials," he said.Dan started cataloguing the wood he finds and sorting it for later use, so there is provenance to each piece, to make the work more meaningful to him.He has named it Project Driftwood."I might find a piece then not use it for up to a year, but when I pick the piece of wood up again I remember that thought and feeling."That's important"
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