02M-11

Last Chance

People wander the damp narrow brick street under myriads of colored lights. Shop fronts are glowing and fake frost decorates their windows. Even in a place where one has to drive an hour to find snow, it's associated with holidays.

I work my way though the crowd. Friday night. The rain was just enough to freshen the air, and ended at a convenient time. With some relief I open the toolshop's door.

"I'll be right there!"
A couple of cats come out, and then become alert.
"You smell my neighbor's cat, don't you? Well, she's a good cat. I'm on kitty detail while he's out of town." I lean down so they can sniff my hands; eventually they decide I'm all right.

"Here it is."
"Wow. That's impressive." Two octagonal rings of PVC pipe, with vertical pipes holding them about a foot apart, and a half-octagon handle looping up from the top ring. Hardware cloth covers the sides.
"This is the last of its kind."
"I can see some advantages, though. For one, it fits the form better."
"Yah. I hope it works."
"Maybe you can make one for each size of form." I duck quickly enough to keep from wearing the new screen.
"Unfortunately, it's not finished yet. Taking a great long time, it is. I should have made a jig to hold the parts for glueing. All those little bitty pieces, each having to be cut precisely. And then you have about 300 milliseconds to glue them precisely. The only saving grace is a balancing of imprecision. Don't look too closely."
"I think it will work well, even if it doesn't meet your standards."
"I'm learning a lot, too; I'll use what I've learned to rebuild your Quick Filter so that it's less dangerous to you." We both laugh. I've already scratched myself with that one a few times, but it is fomenting a revolution.

Coarse sand sculpture that holds nearly as well as fine sand. Less work, more locations, a stretching of the ecological niche.

"No problem. I'll just use the original tomorrow."
"Great. Let me know what breaks."
"Will do. Thanks."

I walk home through light rain. Airplanes bore bright holes through tattered clouds. More rain is predicted for tomorrow. Only the new day's sunlight will tell for sure. Sculpture? Bike ride? Working on tools in my dry garage? A sculpture would be best; I'd like to wind up the Vacation Series with a bang.

Build number: 02M-11 (lifetime start #258); 3 units amid earthworks and borrow pits. Unit C failed before whole piece was completed.
Title: "New Bamboo: Pandemonium"
Date: November 30
Location: Venice Breakwater, on the flat
Start: 0800, construction time 7.5 hours
Unit A: 41 inches tall, 21 inches diameter nominal, immersion screened native sand (Latchform)
Unit B: 30 inches tall, 19 inches diameter, immersion screened native sand (Short Form)
Unit C: 29 inches tall, 19 inches diameter, immersion screened native sand (Short Form). This piece failed after it was finished.
Plan: Unit A on crescent-shaped riser base on east end of central borrow pit. Unit B on low base at west end of central borrow pit. Unit C in borrow pit south of central one. Crescent-shaped borrow pit east of central one. Unit C's pit shaped to fit with central pit.
Helpers: none
Digital Images: 74, with Canon Powershot G2 (includes Rich's safeties)
Photo 35mm: none
Photo 6X7: none
Photo volunteer: Rich, w/Baggiemat and Powershot G2
Video motion: none (camcorder left at home deliberately)
Video still: none
Video volunteer: Larry Dudock, w/Elura
New Equipment: none

1. Sunlight

The street is damp, water drips occasionally from the eaves, and condensation covers all the car windows but the sky is washed-out blue with a few streamers of cloud. Farther to the west it looks the same. Half an hour later I'm on my way.

It's a fairly historic occasion: the box filter is still in the garage, replaced for this high-tide sculpture with the Quick Filter. Equipment is easy to gather but plans are different; I have no idea what to make. As usual the important thing is to start.

A wide smooth expanse of clean sand welcomes me to the beach. I could put a whole sculpture garden out here.

Puffs of cloud crown the mountains, small now but having potential. Vapor in the air attenuates the sunlight but it still warms me as I choose a spot and start digging. A man watches as I industriously shovel sand from a hole onto a rising pile but he says nothing.

Well, OK, how about making a curving base and putting the Latchform on top of that? Then I could put a smaller sculpture over there at the borrow pit's west end. That's enough of a plan for now.

I dig another borrow pit east of the original and use that sand to fill the form. This is the first time I've used the Latchform with the Quick Filter and there are two problems. One is that this form is deeper so I can't see the filter, which means I can't aim the shovels of sand as I drop them in. It's hit or miss. The form is also bigger, giving more opportunity to miss. I'll just have to hope that no sculpture-breakers fall outside the screen's frame down there.

I get hints of another problem. The sand seems more coarse than usual. Can that be? Such a big difference in only the ten feet between here and the other borrow pit? If so, it'll be a good test of the Quick Filter's ability to improve packing quality.

When that form is full I set up the Short Form at the other end of the borrow pit and fill it. This sand seems OK. After that's filled, the sculpture ensemble seems to need something. A third pile. Where? The obvious places are too obvious: next to the tall one, or close to the second one. Try harder. Ah. There's the spot. Dig a shelf in the side of Unit B's borrow pit and put it there. Should make nice shadows.

The clouds are growing. The Santa Monica Mountains have brilliant build-ups of cumulus over them and inland are even bigger potato-piles of vapor. Overhead, however, is clear and blue. Farther to the west are only a few little puffballs. The air has cleared and the sea sparkles. A few pelicans circle south of the breakwater and then dive. Some sets of big swells come in, rise and take surfers with them. What a delight.

2. Design

Unit B is already peeled so I'll start with it. My idea is to have a flat face directed at Unit A, which will get some similar treatment. Beyond that the plan rapidly disappears into haze.

First of all, was 02M-10 a fluke? Nope. This pile is just as resistant to being carved as the prior ones, which means immersion screening yields consistently good piles. The pack quality invites more detailed carving and my imagination runs wild. The sculpture takes on internal structure and detail that I never thought possible with this kind of sand.

It has a sort of squarish frame. Inside that are curving complications. Well, why not try a similar design in Unit A? I walk over there and remove the Latchform from the pile. The first cut goes with a gritty crunch that's unusual here at the Breakwater. The sand was indeed coarser over here, layers mixed with the better sand. Somewhat more than half the sand is coarser than anything I've carved here before this.

The miracle is in how well it holds together. Even reasonably sharp, crisp edges hold on. Utterly amazing. I carve with great abandon, even cutting a hole through near the bottom. The design isn't the best; it is, after all, coarse sand and I don't want to overdo it. Besides which, time is rushing past and there's one more piece to carve.

I'm not the only one running late.
"Larry said he'd be here to haul sand, Rich. Said he wanted to sculpt tomorrow, but looks like something else came up."
"He called us, too."
A few minutes later here he comes, ambling across the sand.
"Well, I managed to get most of what I needed. Left out the cart's wheels, however."
"A cart with no wheels doesn't do you much good." I'm trying to figure out what to do next and don't need distraction.
"Nope. This is true. Would you mind if I went and got your cart? It's either that or go back to get my wheels."
"No problem. The keys are attached to bungee cord in the table's pocket."

I'm hungry and tired. What to do on this third piece? The internal sculpture idea seems to be working well, so some variation of what I've done in the other two seems in order. But I want this one to be more smooth, less angular, so I carve and rub it into a smooth dome and bring the bottom inward so it looks as if it's ready to spring upward.

Larry is back.
"Where should I stash the sand?"
I point vaguely. "Over there. Go a few feet beyond last night's tide line."
He goes to work. "How many buckets does it take?"
"Sixteen full ones. Twenty if they're not full."

Symmetry to the rescue. Design one facet, duplicate it twice, and there's a sculpture. A graceful opening revealing spaces and curves inside. Symmetry can be boring to make but at the tag end of the day it fits. And it's a nice piece. Any of these three would hold up by itself, but this one is particularly elegant.





"I like this one, Rich. And to think it's made of native sand. Amazing. A few years ago I couldn't have gotten this out of good sand!"
Larry has finished his sand relocation and is fiddling with cameras and such, standing near my sculpture.
"And to think he owes it all to me. If he hadn't seen my screen in operation, he wouldn't have made the Ugly Filter."
Now, this is annoying. "Yah. I'd never have amounted to anything without you. But may I point out that you had the problem, and I solved it? And it's not the Ugly Filter. It has earned the name Quick Filter, even if it isn't the most beautiful tool I've ever made." The words come with some heat that makes what I mean clear.

Ah, forget it. The problem now is to finish this piece before the light goes away. Work on it.

"It's three o'clock." Rich announces this as if he wants to wring a few more minutes out of the day. "Look at the rainbow!"
I turn. Over the city is a solid white rampart of cloud, one of them striped in glowing color.
"I drove through rain most of the way to get here. Didn't stop until Marina del Rey. And it rained hard last night."
"I think we got some last night, but ever since it has been clear. What a glorious day."
"Yes."
"A little more work here, and then I have to do clean-up." I quickly work around the borrow pits, smoothing their edges and shaping the ridges, looking like any other kid in a big sandbox.



3. Shear Exhaustion

Many compromises must be made in order to produce a multiple sculpture. Time has to be budgeted and one thing that gets scanted is spraying.

After giving the earthworks a once-over--planning to fine-tine them after cleaning up the sculptures--I pick up the brush and start polishing Unit C. At the moment the beach is quiet.

I can hear the soft crack. It runs the full length of the sculpture. Damn. Too dry, too adventurous. Should have sprayed more.
"Big trouble over here!" Larry says.
"Yah, I know. Clean-up on that one is finished." I carefully climb out of the borrow pit and hope, as I go to work on Unit B, that the crack is only superficial.

A series of soft thuds tells me I'm wrong. Unit C has shed its outer panels on two sides, and the upper part of the third side is lying in smooth-surfaced shards on the top of the internal sculpture. My energy disappears just as fast. The rest of the clean-up is desultory.

"How will this go in the record book? Will it get a build number, or just a lifetime start?" That's Larry, our statistician, here to haul sand for his sculpture tomorrow. It will be his first entirely solo effort in California.
"I don't know." And I'm too tired to think about unimportant things.

I walk over to look at the fallen sculpture. Its core is still intact, along with the leg on the east.
"The top came straight down."
"No, Rich, this leg fell over. What you see is its top section lying on here." I poke at the blocks of smoothed sand. "It pushed the other two legs off. Too dry? It's well packed, but still not that great sand. In low-tide sand it would have held. Or if I'd sprayed it more. Maybe. Anyway, the top was too flat."
"And very thin."
"Yes. It simply pushed the two legs off the core."

4. Light

"The rainbow is back."
I line it up with the sculpture and get a few more images. My heart isn't really in it.

The day, however, ending in glory and maybe some of that shines on the sculpture.
"You know, Rich, if I had time I could rebuild Unit C."
He laughs. "You could reuse the sand."
"Yes. Wouldn't even have to filter it. Of course, I'd have to find the energy someplace.

Carving this sculpture was a lot of fun. Just that. No plan, interesting things came out, including the fact that the coarse sand held up. Mostly. This is also looking like a bona fide revolution, being able to make sculptures like these from common sand.



"There's part of Catalina, and the knob at the end of Point Dume is there."
"Yes." The air has cleared and the sun is flooding the area with gold. The vapor rampart ranges from immaculate white at the top to old gold, now turning orange, at the bottom. "What a day." We stand and watch as moment by moment colors change on far clouds. A sliver of sun comes through under clouds to the west that are only small brethren of the mighty pile over the city. An occasional lightning bolt lights up the works.



"It's time for an experiment. Black and white. This light is perfect for it."
"You can set the digital to shoot that way?"
"Yes. I've never done it." I mess with the buttons and get it set up. Shooting is just like anything else. I wonder how they'll look.




"I've had it, Rich." I start packing up, ready to go, and then I realize I've made a big mistake. "Larry has my keys. And the bike is locked." He went back to my apartment to unload the cart.
"Oh, my. I'd better go to your place."
"Yes, please. Tell him to come back with the keys. I can handle the trailer by myself."
"OK." He heads off. I sit down, my back hurting. As usual.

Various passersby walk past. Some ask about the sculpture. I sit and try to gather energy to get home. Finally I get up and in the last of the light--the wall of cloud has turned grey except for the very orange top--and tow the trailer across sand. This is made easy by the wetting it got last night. Then I just sit by my bike until I see someone with a flashlight.

"Over here, Larry."
"Right. I'm sorry about this. I didn't realize the bike key was on here."
Where did you think it was? It's an interesting lesson: Lord Chaos learning that there are reasons for routine. When I'm exhausted and unable to think clearly, it's important to do things the same way so that I don't lose something important. Larry completely disrupted the pattern and I was too focused, too tired, too out of it to figure this out.

Unlocked and rolling, I turn north but am distracted by a man with a display of flashing lights. LEDs, maybe? I stop to take a look. LEDs, yes, in various shaped pieces of plastic. Curiosity satisfied, I continue through the clear night. Lightning flashes in a distant cloud. I like rain, but I'm glad they left me alone to sculpt today. Monday I have to return to work.

Written December 1
Edited and amended December 7



Vacation Series sculptures:
November 12: 02P-8, In front of Manhattan power plant. Washed out. No photos.
November 13: 02M-6, three units all simple, Venice Breakwater flat
November 15: 02M-7, three units, dispersed, Venice Breakwater flat
November 17: 02F-19, borrow pit integration test, Venice beach cusp
November 19: 02F-20, borrow pit and extended base riser, Venice Breakwater flat
November 21: 02M-8, "Embrace: for Bob Jeffords" two units very close, Breakwater flat
November 24: 02M-9, "Friends, Fare You Well" three units, common base, Jeffords memorial
November 27: 02M-10, "Cooking Thai: for Bert Adams" two units, Venice
November 30: 02M-11, "New Bamboo: Pandemonium" three units, Unit C FAC, Venice