Etching Drawings of Castles Onto Grains of Sand

Artist and photographer Vic Muniz teamed up with fellow artist and designer Marcello Coelho to turn the common childhood activity of making “Sandcastles“ inside out by etching drawings of castles onto individual grains of sand. This fascinating video from The Creator’s Project documents the process they developed and the thinking that inspired them to spend 4 years working toward this incredible endeavor.

Sandcastles explores material representation across architectural and nano-scales, by traversing pre and post-photography technologies. In collaboration with visual artist Vik Muniz, who drew a series of castles with the use of a camera lucida, we have developed the techniques for etching these drawings onto a grain of sand with the use of a focused ion beam and scanning electron microscope. The final images are exhibited as large scale prints.