Sculptor Peter Codling has spent sixteen years making clay stones in a kiln at his home, numbering them and then inviting people to decorate them before throwing them into the waves off Southsea beach, Portsmouth.
His objective was to hurl one million pebbles into the sea and create an artistic ‘handmade monument to the people by the people for the people’. After much deliberation, he decided to call his work of art ‘One Million Pebbles’.
All sorts of people have been decorating the pebbles and with everything from babies’ fingerprints to dogs’ paws to intricate designs or just names. The idea was that when the pebbles get washed up on the beach, people who find them can put their own value on them and decide what to do with them, keep them and take them home or throw them back into the sea.
Mr Codling, who lives on Hayling Island, Hampshire, said that the pebbles have built up in the layers of the beach and some could take up to one hundred years to wash ashore, while others will just get worn away.
However, it has all come to an end after 500,000 pebbles with funding from the Arts Council, local authorities and sponsors gradually drying up. Funding apparently abounded in the run-up to the Millennium celebrations but that has now run out and Mr Codling cannot afford to continue on his own.
Wonder if he is on benefits as well! Some of the sculptor’s other major projects have included turfing the steps of Portsmouth Guildhall, setting a pair of Wellington boots in a block of concrete and chaining a crisp packet to a bollard.