Beach art grand plan comes full circle

Optical Migraine, Aztec Illusion, and Interfering Butterfly — just some of the mind-boggling images which have been appearing on a West Cork beach in recent months.

The highly stylised geometric designs, some measuring up to 70 metres in diameter, are the work of the newly-formed West Cork Sand Circles, a loose collective who spend several hours every weekend on their art — only to see it washed away by the tide.

Some of the sand-art images are based on the designs of crop circles. Others are simply the creation of co-founder and local computer programmer Matthew Hart — and sometimes they’re just for fun, such as the group’s witch design for Halloween last week.