By Elizabeth Wulfhorst
SEA BRIGHT – The rock towers on a local beach may have disappeared but the artist who created them has emerged.
Andrey Ivanov never intended to be mysterious; he often creates art on the northern beaches of Sea Bright and makes no attempt to hide his actions. But the appearance of over a dozen approximately 5-foot-tall rock structures along the dune line this summer caused many to question their origin. Ivanov, a resident of Woodbridge, began coming to the beach in Sea Bright by “trial and error” three years ago. “We picked the beach because it’s very pleasant, it’s very clean,” he said. Prior to that he and his family went to Sandy Hook beaches for about 20 years.
Ivanov grew up in Odessa, Ukraine, within walking distance of the Black Sea, so going to the beach is in his soul. “I grew up with it,” Ivanov said. “It feels like it’s the right place to be.”
He emigrated to the United States at 19, attended Brooklyn College and then NYU College of Dentistry, and worked in New York. “Then my kids were born and I noticed that I leave the house and they’re still sleeping and I come back and they’re about to go to bed, so I was missing out a lot,” Ivanov said. Comfortable with his wife’s income, the couple decided Ivanov would stay home and look after the children.
Ivanov kept his dental license active though, even filling in for six months recently for a dentist friend who had back problems.
But about 12 years ago, Ivanov began introducing his two now grown children – one just graduated high school, the other in college – to art, awakening the dormant artist in himself. “Sculpture parks was the first thing that we would go to,” he said, “because it’s outside and you walk from place to place. You see a destination, you see a sculpture, then you go to the next one. And with the kids, it’s kind of, they get their exercise, and it’s diverse things to see.”
As his children grew, sculpture gardens led to museums and galleries, both here and abroad.
“And then, it wasn’t planned, just happened that I started painting stuff and also started with the kids,” Ivanov said. “We would just spray paint the tabletops and when those tabletops were sitting for a couple of years, I’m like, let me just paint it more. You know, I would just do geometric abstraction like lines or circles.”
Ivanov got inspiration for his creations from modern artwork he saw in museums; viewing stunning but seemingly simplistic artwork made him realize he could create similar art without the high price tag.
“I go into museum and go to the modern art section and I think, 80% of them, pretty much anybody can do it,” Ivanov said with a laugh. “I mean, it’s not an arrogant statement. It’s just the way it seems to me.”
“I don’t want to pay $1.5 million for 18-by-18 square; I can do my own.”
During the COVID-19 shutdown, Ivanov’s daughter took pictures of all his original creations and created a website, andreyivanovart.wixsite.com/artistgallery, which shows his wide range of work. “There was colorful things that were my own ideas, there were copycatting stuff like from Alma Thomas, from Sol LeWitt, from Gene Davis,” he said. “But then, you know, some ideas are my own, and I’m kind of, I am proud of them.”
Ivanov began stacking rocks on the beach about three years ago when he started coming to Sea Bright. While the beach seemed very clean, locals told him about an old jetty which left rocks buried in the sand.
“Eventually the erosion, the current, would remove the sand and you would find the rock. And it was totally accidental that I started stacking them,” he said.
In prior seasons Ivanov created only one or two towers at a time but this year was different.
“After you reach probably a dozen rocks in the tower, it gets a little unstable,” he explained. “You don’t want people to get hurt,” he said, so he started building more, lower towers. Which had an added benefit for him: “It was easier on my back because some of the rocks are very heavy,” he said.
Ivanov called the sculptures “something to do” on the beach. “I like the process,” he said.
“You’re present with kind of a project and then you do it, you enjoy it. It’s like a you solve a problem. Like, how would you make it appealing or pretty.”
He fought nature a little with his engineering, working to make them stable on the shifting sands and with the wind that can blow quite briskly off the ocean. But his No. 1 enemy? Birds.
“They would sit on the top one and it will collapse,” he said. “It’s funny. We would sit by the towers and because of us the birds wouldn’t come, but then you leave and you look back and you see the birds would land on the top of one of them and just the thing would fall down.”
This year Ivanov said he had a “good run” with the towers which he started in July and which lasted until about Labor Day.
“There was a lot of respect” for the towers from the community, he said, and evidently from Mother Nature, for a while. “I was surprised that they were pretty much staying there without me doing anything,” Ivanov said, and also amazed how popular they became.
“People would come and take pictures. There was, like, wedding photographers coming with couples,” he said, noting people’s responses to his creations are “overwhelmingly nice.”
Mike Silva, a Little Silver resident who runs on the beach is one admirer of Ivanov’s art. He was surprised when the towers he’d seen all summer were just gone one day. Ivanov said several days of rough seas and a full moon in the beginning of September conspired to bring the tide up to the dunes, eroding the sand and wiping away his summer’s work.
“As I learned… if I want to enjoy Andrey’s artwork, I will need to check the beach frequently, because most of that artwork will only exist until the tide comes in and wipes the canvas clean for his next creation,” Silva said.
Ivanov will create on the beach as long as the weather allows.
“I am sure I speak for others when I say I look forward to seeing what natural Andrey creations the spring brings,” Silva said.
Until more rocks resurface, Ivanov has been creating different art with debris found on the beach closer to the bridge and Sandy Hook, including driftwood, crab and mussel shells, and even cinders from long cold campfires.
Mother Nature may have taken “Sea Bright Stonehenge,” as she will most of his art eventually, but Ivanov isn’t deterred. “I like the process. I like when people like it. And I like spending time at the beach.”
The article originally appeared in the September 29 – October 5, 2022 print edition of The Two River Times.
