Holiday Home Sculpture

Holiday Home addresses the life-threatening, endangered plight of Hermit Crabs. In recent years, Hermit Crabs have been found washed up, without shells, on beaches as a result of having become homeless. As each Hermit Crab grows, it sheds its shell and must replace it with the next size up. Without a protective shell, their soft bodies are vulnerable to attack and injury. There are two main reasons why these crabs are struggling to find new shells to move into. Firstly, the declining health of the seas means there are not as many shellfish producing shells in the first place. Coupled with beachcombers, people taking shells home as holiday mementos and for craft projects/home décor, along with the manufacturing of holiday shell souvenirs; all contribute to the declining availability of suitable Hermit Crab homes. Images can now be found online of Hermit Crabs using toothpaste lids, broken bottles, metal bottle caps, tin cans, glass jars and even shotgun cartridges instead of the ocean’s desirable real shells. This tongue-in-cheek sculpture shows a little Hermit Crab that has been forced to move into a Sand Castle Souvenir, adorned with a mixed selection of real ocean shells, which he would have instinctively preferred as his home. The sickening irony being that the shells have been removed from the sea/beach/rock pools to make the souvenir in the first place, which has then been purchased and later discarded as waste, ending up back in the sea. Once discarded and damaged by the sea-weathering process, this adaptable Hermit Crab has been able to wriggle into the cracked base of the souvenir and make this detritus its home. All cast in bronze. This is an edition of 25

Sculpture:Bronze on Bronze

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:3.3 W x 3.3 H x 2.4 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.