02M-5

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There Is No "Undo" Command for Sand Sculpture

Multiplied opportunities for failure. The multiple-pile sculpture's original raison d'etre was simply to fill a contest-sized plot. 2002 has turned into The Year of the Multiple because the design possibilities go far beyond space-filling. And, if one is going to be post-sculptural anyway, what's the difference between being run over by a compact car and being hit by a train?

When George says he'll be there to help with a sculpture I decide to essay once more the multiple balancing act. It's easy to fail, but great fun trying.

Nature's usual role in this process is to provide the essential sand and water. Due to timing, and sloth the day before, I'll be using native sand. Arrival at the beach reveals a further challenge in great heaps of kelp that have washed ashore.

Build number: 02M-5 (lifetime start #250); unfiltered native sand dispersed multiple with earthworks and kelp, Unit C PCF
Title: none
Date: November 2
Location: Venice Breakwater, on the flat
Start: 0745, construction time 7 hours (approx 9 person-hours)
Height, Unit A: 3.5 ft (Latchform); Unit B: 2.5 ft (Short form); Unit C: 2.8 ft (Latchform)
Base: A, 1.75 feet nominal; B, 1.6 feet; C, 1.75 feet nom. Placed on individual sand risers between existing piles of kelp
Helpers: George Ollen
Digital Images: 70, with Canon Powershot G2
Photo 35mm: none
Photo 6X7: none
Photo volunteer: Rich, w/Powershot (incl builder) and Canon Z115
Video motion: none
Video still: none
Video volunteer: none
New Equipment: none

1. The Stage

In my mental plans for this sculpture I have always started with a beach swept smooth and clean by the morning high tide. Sometimes the tide brings up more than it takes away, sand and seaweed, and today is one of those days. Not only is there more sand than usual but there is kelp lying everywhere in heaps and windrows.

This is a real hair-shirt performance. I was too slothful to come down yesterday and fetch good sand so I'll be using the native stuff. This might be encouraging of simplicity, which is beginning to look like a good thing for multi-part sculptures.

The original plan for a tightly integrated set of sculptures goes down with the tide. I just don't feel like moving a couple of tons of kelp. Well, how about siting sculptures in the clear areas between kelp deposits? This has possibilities. I choose three good sites and start work on the first raised base.


2. Supporting Actors

The nice thing about starting a sculpture at high tide is that water is easy to get. This encourages the building of a large riser for the first sculpture, with tails that descend to beach level. The Latchform goes on top and I start tamping.

George shows up when I'm about halfway finished.
"We were up until 12:30. This is what's hard about living with someone. I wouldn't feel good about just going to bed when Tess is still awake. I guess."
I wonder why not. There's a lot about living with other people that I don't know. We'd talked earlier about his enjoyment of early-morning walks on the beach and why he couldn't do that now.

We finish Unit A and leave it standing there on its riser.
"I want another one here. We'll use the short form."
"Where should I get the sand?"
"Deepen that area there. I want a ramp coming up, ending, oh, about here."
We work on the ramp. What I really want is to just place a finished sculpture right onto the undisturbed each. Construction disrupts the area too much, but is unavoidable.

I place the short form on its riser. Filling it doesn't take long, with George shovelling and me doing the tamping.

For the third pile I'll re-use the Latchform because I'm not in the mood for the trash can and its hassles. I choose a site, then reconsider when the original seems too far away. i move it to just inside a curving windrow of kelp. This one is to be lower than the others so its riser is minimal, the sand taken from a curving trench whose line I drew with my toe.

I remove the latchform from Unit A. The column holds. After washing the form off I set it up for the second time and we fill it.
"I'll turn this whole job over to you, George, so I can get the carving started."
"My contract reads that I only have to shovel and talk."
So, I stay with it. The problem is that George can't talk and shovel at the same time; he starts a story, the shovel becomes a prop.
"Mas arena, por favor."
"Oh, yes."

He's not used to this rough antithesis to my usual finely controlled process.
"That's amazing. Three piles in what? An hour? Hour and a half?"
This is how it used to be. Just throw the sand in, whatever I could find.


3. The Lead

It's about as close to ritual as I get, this walk to the trailer to pick up my tub of tools. I don't come here to pack sand. The real work is about to begin. I carry the tub past the heaps of seaweed and put it on the sand near Unit A. I pick up the Super Slicer and take the first cut.

The pile is soft. Typical of the coarser sand taken from this high-tide site. Sharp edges won't hold, the sand will dry rapidly so it will have to be sprayed frequently, and I'll have to make sure all forces are well contained.

I've been thinking for some time of a sculpture whose two major legs are joined by hollow bridges. This seems like a good time to try it because the design should be relatively undemanding of the sand.

First I carve the east side into a long curve. This sand won't take anything fancier. The other side is steeper but still curves inward, to hang slightly over the east side's top.

Two hours later the sculpture has taken on more complication. My favorite is a surface that curves like a saddle over the space below. Holes through the west slab admit light.

"That's pretty well established. Time to work on the next. The day is short."
"Right."
I turn to the short form, removing the Naugahyde and washing it in the pool left behind by the low tide.

The starting plan is for an echo of the saddle-shaped piece from Unit A, suspended on curving legs. I start it by carving the overall shape so that the pile looks like an egg with its wide end on the sand.
"Stop right there. It's perfect."
I continue shaping. "This wouldn't be much fun if I listened to you, George." The situation is rather like those cartoons wherein an angel on one shoulder tells the character to resist the devil on the other shoulder. Rich wants lots of holes. George likes solid simplicity. I just want to carve some sand and solid objects are too simple.

Still, the idea has merit.
"I'll leave it this way for a time and see how the rest goes."
"Good."
Then one of the random lines left by my polishing hand suggests a two-element sculpture, the two parts leaning against each other in a simpler version of Unit A. Good enough. I make the cut, up and around, as if the egg had been sliced on a diagonal. The western part is the smaller, and I carve it to curve into the first cut. Then I cut windows on each side so I can carve the center out. Light passes through.

Will this be right? You only get one cut, and there's no way to put it back. The whole thing is carved live on the fly. Sometimes you can sneak up on things and pull back if it doesn't work, but short winter days don't allow much sneaking. Make the cut, make it work.

"It's too symmetrical!"
"There's no pleasing you, is there? I was thinking that the symmetry might be a good counterbalance for the other pieces." Just because this didn't work at San Pedro doesn't mean it can't work here.

The first two sculptures are on islands. I want the third one to be more a part of this beach, so I trim it to a taper and then cut flutes that curve and continue into the base area. As I carve the flutes I wonder if they're too close to each other. When the central two fall off I know they were too close. And that the sand wasn't very well packed. I hope the rest holds up.

I'm getting tired. Rich's cookies and Zone bars will only carry one so far. I stayed up too late last night. The third sculpture straggles to an unsatisfying conclusion.
"We're running out daylight, and I have lots of basal carving left to do." This is a lame excuse for a lame sculpture, but maybe I can redeem it with good earthworks.

I shovel sand around, carving lines in the beach around the heaps of kelp. Water thrown by the bucketful smooths the sand in the borrow pits. I build up some areas and cut others away; the result is still three sculptures amid seaweed. Ah well, who cares about failure when it's so much fun to try?


4. The Critics

"You just don't know when to quit. You need to hire us to tell you. When we say stop, you stop."
"Except Rich never says stop. Unless the sculpture falls over."

The best-sited sculpture is Unit C. It leans slightly eastward, against the slope of its base, and the combination is graceful. it works with the beach. Too bad the sculpture itself is the weakest of the three.

Unit A is a good sculpture but its tall riser separates it too far from the beach. Its complexity is a further problem. By itself it would be great, but here it's like a Beethoven movement inserted into a Steve Reich symphony.

Unit B's elegant simplicity lends support to George's ideas about knowing when to quit. Its base is too tall for it to flow from the beach as I'd wanted.

It's easy to see in which order they were carved. Quality goes downhill with the alphabet. This is a characteristic of multiples, and George's simplicity might alleviate this as well.


5. The Show Wraps

I begin to relax from the construction frenzy and realize the sun is higher in the sky than I'd thought.
"There's at least an hour of daylight left!"
"Yep," Rich says, "It's about 3:40"
"Too bad I don't have any energy left." That's the life of the one-day beach sand sculptor: always short of something.

I shoot a round with my digital camera. Today has introduced another first into the process: no film photography, no video. Documentation only on digital stills. There is wondrous simplicity in this. My pack is much lighter. Image prep is much easier too, and yields better quality.

Art is never finished. I'm not happy with the base. It's my sculpture. I go back to work, scattering sand over the water-smoothed areas, and trying to reduce some of the ridges and mounds. The effort is partially successful. Randomizing with thrown sand helps the sculptures to stand out, and reduces the impact of their tall risers, but the smooth sand looked better.

Ah, well, you have to quit sometime.
"I've had it. Tired, cold and hungry."
We pack up and walk away, all three of us working to get the trailer over all that dry sand. It has built much farther out than usual, making an already long walk even more tedious.

Sunlight bathes the beach in soft gold. The sculptures glow amid the damp brown seaweed. The setting is fantastic. I just wish I'd taken better advantage of it; opportunities like this don't happen often.

I wobble away northward, into a cold damp wind, as the light fades. Ah, what fun. It didn't work all that well, but it was great fun finding out.


6. The Director's Cut

By any standard I use to judge my work, this piece just didn't work. Why, then, am I so excited?

The various parts don't really belong with each other. The earthworks don't help, separating the sculpture's elements too much from the beach. The seaweed helps ameliorate the clumsy bases, but there's still not much here to make a multiple.

What do I expect? More to the point, what do I know? Maybe I'm excited because of the possibilities inherent in ignorance. The direction of sand sculpture is always forward, no undo is possible, and forward from this point looks promising.

One principle that drives complex sculpture is that I come to the beach to spend a day. Pounding sand for two hours and then spending only an hour carving a simple sculpture just wouldn't be fun. There needs to be more. Well, how about several simple sculptures instead of one complex one? Might not be a bad idea.

They may not work perfectly together, but they're still a decent family. It's interesting to walk around and through the site to get different views and details. Video might make a better presentation than stills, but the main thing is to make a sculpture.

In this case, make three, plus earthworks. Experiment. See where it goes. It's a multiple because I say it is.


Postscript: Self-judgment, 2017

In the process of looking at images to use in a sand sculpture slide show in Second Life, I've been able to look again at these multiples. Fifteen years later I know much better the problem I have with self-judgment.

Some sort of evaluation is necessary to an artist. Is today's work something I like and want to work with? How might I make it better? Of course, "better" is a very slippery concept in art and requires, I know now, a very careful touch to avoid strangling the process.

Snap judgment worked against me in this sculpture. Analysis is never helped by fatigue as it's easy to get pulled into default states. One who hates himself finds it easy to hate what he does. It's a wonder I got this sculpture done at all.

There are real problems with the multiple. There's only so much time. It can be spent in making and carving one pile, or making multiple piles with earthworks. The latter allows less time for detail and polish. I had this expectation that I'd be able to make three detailed sculptures in the time nomrlly allowed for one.

Now, fifteen years later, I can turn a more kindly eye on this sculpture. I'm tired of self-judgment. Memory, as often happens is wrong. It's an interesting sculpture that plays with light and space. It's even beautiful from some angles.

Written November 3
Edited and amended November 11
Postscript added 2017-12-22

Blog updated 2017-12-22 to replace Photobucket links
Updated again 2017-12-24 to add images