Seashell Women
Since 2020, Linda Groen has been creating objects from natural materials that wash up on the beach. In particular seashells, like common whelks – which have become wonderfully coloured, weathered, worn and torn due to years of wandering over the sandy seabed – are brought back to life as ‘ghosts of the sea’, inspired by Ted Hughes’s poem The Seashell:
The sea fills my ear
With sand and with fear.
You may wash out the sand,
But never the sound
Of the ghost of the sea,
That is haunting me.
The uniqueness of each seashell is enhanced through an addition of papier-mâché, although the very nature of this material makes it impossible for the seashell women to return to the water without dissolving into it – just like Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid. Instead, they float, with their hair attached to a piece of driftwood, inside an ‘air aquarium’.
The natural colours of the sometimes centuries old shells, sometimes adorned with mother-of-pearl, blend seamlessly with the newly added parts. Occasionally, an atypical whelk colour, such as coral red or ultramarine, is chosen.
The further north along the western coast of the Netherlands, the more translucent the whelks that wash ashore appear to be, with the warm white glow of alabaster. These are the true ‘ghosts of the sea’.
On the southern shores, the shells seem to be richer in colour and somehow sturdier in their (though always elegant) design. To emphasize their ruggedness, the hair of the whelk women created out of these shells, is often braided into a sailor’s knot, which can be attached to the driftwood in various ways.
A whelk with a little one
Sometimes, alongside whelks of average size, little whelks are washed ashore. In case a larger specimen and a small one have almost the same colours, shape and pattern, they are ideal to represent a mother and child.
The film The Piano (1993) is crucial in this context, for several reasons. That is why the first ‘whelk with little one’ is titled ‘The Piano’, in honour of Ada and Flora.
In ‘Iron’, the mother and child – both coloured in black, various greys, and rusty brown – are entwined with each other via the hair made of hemp cord. This natural product refers to the local history of Krommeniedijk, the place of origin of the seashell women (‘schelpenvrouwen’), making the nearby coast, where the shells were found, even more connected to that very village some ten kilometers to the east, where in the past, hemp was beaten, hackled and woven to canvas sails, for ships to travel across all the seas.
Exhibitions of Seashell Women / 'Ghosts of the Sea'
For information about present and upcoming exhibitions, please visit the home page, and follow the seashell women via Instagram!
Presently, several seashell women are in stock at Galerie Artacasa in Amsterdam.
