The Architect and the Ringer
Step one is helping to dig out an SUV that was inadvisedly taken from its normal concrete habitat. The poor thing is in up to the axle in dry sand. Helpless, and the operators are without a clue as to how to get it out. I show them how to use sweat for the job, and then walk over to the contest registration tent.
"Hi. Who are you with?"
"Continental Development."
"Great. You're in plot #3, over there."
"Thanks. Is there anything in the rules about using only sand within the plot?"
"Nope."
"OK. I'll go get the rest of my equipment."
Dry. You wouldn't believe how much water this sand will adsorb. It's more economical to haul wet sand up the beach than to bring water to mix with the dry, high-beach sand.
"What's going on?" Two eager surfers, pausing on their way to the waves.
"A sand sculpture contest, for Heal the Bay." Various other groups have arrived, well before the official start time, to cache water around their plots. This saves some time. With only four hours allowed for working even a few minutes are worth saving. "Companies pay to enter, then assemble a team of employees to make a sculpture."
"You're the only one here who looks like he knows what he's doing."
"I was hired to do the job."
"Oh, a ringer!"
Don't say that too loudly, please.
"Larry, we'd like to hire you to videotape our wedding."
"When's it happening?"
"June 30. That's a Sunday."
"OK, Eldwin, nothing else is happening that weekend. I'll be sure to rest up for it." Chinese weddings run all day.
"Larry, this is David, with Continental Development Corporation. We're entering a sand sculpture contest in a couple of weeks. We're wondering if you could help us with it. Please call me back and let me know."
"Hello. David Chang speaking."
"Hi, David. This is Larry Nelson, the sand sculptor, returning your phone call."
"Oh, hi, Larry! Thanks for calling me back!"
At least he sounds enthusiastic, and he remembers making the phone call. Sometimes they don't.
"What we have is a sand castle contest that Heal the Bay is putting on. We want to enter this year, and were wondering if you could help us out."
"Where is it taking place?"
"Venice Beach."
Well, that's good news! A contest with decent sand!
"It's part of Bay Days. Companies pay $300 to enter their teams. We want to enter so we can build some name recognition."
"When does this happen?"
"June 29."
Oh, my. Life just got more complicated. Maybe. We talk about plans and possibilities. "Probably the best thing you could do now would be to look at my Web site and see if you like my style of sculpture."
"We already have. That's quite a Web site! I never knew how much it takes to make a sculpture."
"Well, then, what do you want to make?"
"Let me talk about that with my co-workers. I'll call you back."
I've heard that before.
The phone rings.
"Hi, Larry. This is David Chang. How would you like to play in the sand for us?"
"What's the plan?"
"You make a sculpture. We'll help."
Build number: 02M-1 (lifetime start #243)
Title: "Bigger Than It Looks"
Date: June 29
Location: Venice Beach, north of Breakwater
Start: 0900 formal, 0800 prep; stop time 1300
Height, Unit A: 3.5 feet (Latchform); Unit B: 1.8 feet (Latchform)
Base: 1.75 feet nominal, each piece (ellipsoid)
Photo 35mm: approx 10 exp TMX135 w/Baggiemat
Photo 6X7: none
Photo volunteer: Rich
Video motion: partial walkaround, detail tracking w/XL1 (25 min on two tapes)
Video still: various, no plan
Video volunteer: George, w/XL1
New Equipment: Rebuilt Steel Finger (#2C); #25 Steel Thumb type 2
1. The Parameters of the Problem
Venice Beach. The name conjures mental images of golden sand, blue water, and carnival. Surfing. Sunset walks after endless summer days. Tourists come and leave and the image stays intact, unaffected by their quick visit. Some of us know better, we who have dug into the sand, felt the force of winter surf, fought tooth and nail to defend a sand sculpture from a hungry tide.
Sand is sand. Mix it with some water, push it together and make something. A call to the event director brings bad news: the contest site is north of the Breakwater. The sand there is never anything but coarse. This is all right for sand creations that are both low and wide but it demands very careful packing to make anything that satisfies me. I compensate by searching the beach for the finest sand, and have built equipment for hauling good sand from where it is to where I need it.
We can deal with bad sand; with help and determination I made a sculpture in Santa Cruz where the sand is even worse. The second dimension of this job is time: four hours, hard-edged. Santa Cruz was limited only by how early I wanted to get up. Good sand is, however, very far away even for one equipped with a cart designed for hauling heavy loads over beach sand.
Eldwin's wedding is going to run all day and I'll be busy. Usually I plan nothing for the day after a sculpture, but this sculpture will be only four hours. Go home afterward, relax, get ready for the next event. No problem.
I load up all the equipment and head out at 0745. Sand sculpture time is different; it seems to be thinner and faster-flowing. An hour spent on preparation will help.
2. Advance Work (It's Only Cheating If You're Caught)
"I didn't know we could get sand!" This comment floats my way from the #4 plot. Most of the groups here early are hauling water and setting buckets around their plots. Standard sculpture contest practice. I've been fetching wet sand because, in my experience, sand packs more reliably when it's already wet than when it starts out dry. It's also a way to be more efficient by hauling sand and water together.
Hauling sand isn't prohibited, and stockpiling it doesn't need any of my limited number of buckets. Another comment comes from next door: "They've got a ringer over there." There is a difference. Specialized equipment and a certain determination, not to mention knowledge specific to this beach. I know this place. I know what to do. Competence feels good.
Then I get a really radical thought. If water's OK, then wet sand is OK. If getting sand from outside my plot is OK, then I can go anyplace, if there's time. Six hundred feet south, the storm drain has done its usual good job of collecting the fine, creamy sand that is the reason I sculpt here. Layers of the finer sand will help hold the sculpture together, and these darker layers will make interesting contrast with the lighter native sand. Any temptation to fetch another four-bucket load gets sweated out of me. A rare occurrence: cheating makes more work.
3. Teamwork (Management as Ad-hoc as the Sculpture)
"Larry?"
"Yes."
"Hi. I'm Ernie."
"Nice to meet you."
"What do you want me to do?"
"The sand is very dry up here. We'll save time by bringing wet sand up the beach; see where I've been digging? You can use the cart to haul sand, and just dump it on the pile."
"All right."
"Thanks for the help."
"No problem. Just bring home the gold."
Fat chance. I signed a contract, sent by a lawyer. It states that I will produce a sculpture similar to what's on my Web site, and that it will be finished at the stated time. There's nothing in there about winning. Just do my best to see that it's still standing when the whistle blows.
David is the next to arrive, looking as enthusiastic as he sounded on the telephone. We shake hands. "What do I need to do?"
Four hours. I thought long and hard about how to use the time. Use the big form? I did some repair work on it and made sure all of its parts were available, but eventually decided that its 28 cubic feet of sand were more than we could handle. It also takes longer to set up. That latter argument also precluded the tall sailcloth form.
Four hours. In the old "fling it in and hit it with a stick" days the simple process lent itself to flexible timing. Process improvements and improving ideas led to 10-hour sculptures, followed by 11-hour ones and even longer. If I had enough daylight; 8-hour winter days felt cramped.
What can you do with four hours? With bare hands, not much. Tools are levers working with time. What takes ten strokes with a hand might be done with one stroke of a well-designed tool, offset somewhat by the task of choosing the tool. The tool might also do the job better so it wants less refinement and clean-up. I've been under some economic pressure lately, needing to produce sculpture on a schedule, and have discovered that yesterday's 10-hour sculpture takes about five hours now.
We have four hours. The key word here is "we." By practicing "fastpacking" I can fill the Latchform with 8.5 cubic feet of sand in about an hour.
"You can start building!"
Shouts ring out and teams attack the sand. All the other plots swarm with people; we have five, but they know how to work. When there are empty buckets, someone fills them. When I need sand, Russ is there with half a bucket to pour into the form.
I draw a line. "My idea is to make this a sort of seagull roost or house. We'll make waves over here, hitting a beach here. The sculpture will be on a headland."
"What do we do?"
"Main thing is to get this whole area damp."
In half an hour we have the form full. "We're ahead of schedule; I budgeted an hour for the piling."
I step back and look. That one cylinder is awfully lonely in this huge plot. This has always been a problem: you can have size, or good packing. For myself this doesn't matter but we're up against sculptures that are already much larger. Four hours. Virginia and I talked about this years ago: how to make a small fine sculpture fill a huge plot. One answer was to make several sculptures, and one possibility was a Zen garden style. We don't have time for that today.
"Were you all watching as I filled this?"
"Yes."
"OK. Let's make a second pile right here. I'll start carving this one while you pack. Fill it about half full."
Four hours. I pop the form off the big pile and immediately set it up again on another base a few feet away. It's still small, but the interaction of the two pieces might help; it's something I've thought about for years but have so far expressed it only twice. Any idea wants practice. Then I realize that most of my recent free-pile sculptures have been, in design, multi-part pieces. Do the same thing here, but bigger. They go to work filling the form as I choose a tool and start carving.
4. Under Contract (The Economics of Compromise)
The tool hits the sand. Performance time. Can I run with the big boys? Make it beautiful, make it fit the theme, make it on time. We're a long way from one man, a spoon and sunset the only limit.
The newly rebuilt #2C Steel Finger feels good in the hand but isn't the right tool for this job. I put it down and pick up the other new one, the #25 Steel Thumb; its new sharp edge digs in until sand packs up against the supporting wood. There's no time for this. I put that one down and grab the Loop Tool.
Think seagulls. Graceful curves. Leave out the squabbling, leave in the strength. Lousy sand, but the top few inches are pretty strong because they're made of the last bucket of fine sand. I didn't filter any of it, and drilling the first hole reveals a problem: a chunk of sand lifts when the tool runs into a shell. I back out, spray the spot and drill more carefully and the sand stays put.
Now, this edge needs to be a long curve. It will continue into the base and over to the second unit. At the top it'll lean over and loop around. Good. Curve this back. Over here, ah, there's our first seagull standing on a wingtip. Or perhaps a pelican at the start of its dive.
"David, do you want a logo or something over here?"
"That would be good, Russ. Larry, how do we do that?"
"Make a nice smooth pad. Here's a tool for it. If you tilt the sand panel it'll be easier to read."
"OK. How about carving?"
"Hmm." I hand him the Steel Pinky. "Try this."
"That works. Now, David, what's that logo?"
"CD, in a circle."
"Is it a full circle? I thought there was a break."
"Here's one of my cards."
"Good. Thanks."
Russ is apparently a friend rather than a co-worker. More importantly, he's a mierenneuker. Making logos is unbelievably difficult, calling for attention to detail that the Dutch euphemism fits perfectly. I can't do it.
"Russ, for those wide areas you might find this tool better." I hand him the original Steel Thumb. Tools' forms are forced by their intended use, but a good tool in the hand of a determined user can accomplish far more than its designer intended. I have none of the tools professionals use for logos in sand but there are stand-ins and I learn from watching him work.
Even David's wife gets into the process, spraying the sculptures and logo while we work. This saves over an hour in itself and I think of her as the "Spray Wight" for no other reason than I like the name.
"Russ, do you want to do a title, also?" He's finished with the CD logo.
"Sure."
"Put it right there. The title is 'Seagull House.'"
He goes to work. If I ever do another corporate sculpture I hope I can hire him. I even flunked lettering in the junior-high drafting class.
"Larry, do you want some water?"
"No time."
"Would you drink it if I got it?"
"Yes. Thanks, George." He's here to do videography but has finished the tape. He brings a bottle provided by the event organizers and I dump it down my throat. The day is heating up.
With the big sculpture's design well established, it's time to think about the small one. Its larger neighbor is looking rather complex so I decide to make the short one simpler. It'll slant back toward the big piece, with curving ribs to reinforce the implied motion. Waste sand from both goes into the sloping connection between them.
"I've been looking at the competition. The folks next door have been making lots of comments about cheating. Not many ideas here, however."
"Thanks, George." I wonder if the other teams will protest; as far as I know, Continental is the only company that thought to hire a sculptor. Add this low-grade worry to all of the others. The primary worry is still about the sand holding together.
"One hour. You have one hour left." That man surely loves his bullhorn. And I need to get it into gear; on a typical sand sculpture day I spend upward of an hour just in clean-up.
"Move sand, Larry!" I mutter to myself. "You need to lighten this thing."
"What are you going to do with that top? It looks rough."
George has a good point. I do some delicate trimming and hollowing. Other places need work and brushing.
The Official Sand Sculpture Time is 1245. I sweep my footprints out of the plot with the broom and rake David brought. Russ puts the finishing touches on "Seagull House," and with a few minutes to spare we call it finished.
"Larry, I have some gardening work to do. Call me when you get back home."
"OK, George. Have fun!"
"Stop carving! All teams, stop carving." Bullhorn Man is making his rounds.
My usual objective is to produce the best possible sculpture, with the only limit being my skill. All aspects of my process are directed to this end. Economic forces lead to change; yes, make a sculpture but it has to be done on time and it has to stand. Compromise. In 1997 this would have been a good piece, but it would have taken all day. Why is it that art must give way to economics?
5. Judgement (Waiting for the Hangman)
This project has brought together the efforts and talents of several people. It has cost the company at least $800.
"David, do you think it's worth it?"
"Oh, yes. Definitely."
I look at the competition and wonder. Our sculpture looks lost in its wide plot, especially because it's flanked on one side by a titanic struggle between two sea creatures and on the other by a huge flying saucer decorated with bottles and shells. In our plot is nothing but sand and it looks austere by comparison.
Farther down is a huge sea turtle, with a nest and hatchlings. Two teams have carved huge octopi with various imaginative ways of forming the suckers. The only other team to use forms has produced a large structure that transforms fish skeletons into healthy fish.
"It's a nice idea, but the flags don't add anything."
"I agree, Rich." We're taking a tour of the completed sculptures as I munch on a much-needed bagel.
The most interesting of the competitors is a different take on the Zen garden idea. They have carved Japanese writing along one edge of the plot; apparently it means something like "A Place for Serenity at the Beach." The theme for the contest is "A Place at the Beach."
"This gets my vote for second place."
"Really? It's not much."
"I know. The idea is much better than the execution, but I like the idea a lot. They should have worked harder at it."
In the far corner is a plastic-lined pool, with carefully laid patches of seaweed around it. Farther to the right are three smooth mounds of sand. In the large middle section are three three-rock stacks. Step back and let the design speak; forget the weak production values and amplify it in your mind. Too much work for most people. The other sculptures here reach out and grab the passerby, imposing their size on everyone. How do you tell someone that their idea is great but needs much more work to make it real? I settle for telling them that I like the piece a lot.
"Yours has the best craftsmanship."
"Thank you." Most passersby don't notice things like this.
The judges are gathered near our sculpture. They are one of the stranger aspects of the day, being two City engineers, a real estate reporter, an athlete and a design instructor.
"Tell us about your sculpture."
"I sort of imagined a place for seagulls to live." The judges look at me with faces of stone and the word-well rapidly goes dry. "You need to, uh, walk all the way around it."
They amble off, between our piece and the spaceship, and then turn away. David and I look at each other and shrug our shoulders. Judges are strange.
"It seems that my sculpture either does really well or completely tanks. I won the first contest, tanked at the next two."
I hotfoot it across the sand for another bagel. Then I pick up equipment in a daze. Why a daze? It was a four-hour sculpture. Well, five if you count advance work. It's actually an eight-hour sculpture forced into four, and I feel all eight of them.
"We'll need a representative from your team. We're going to announce the results."
We all straggle over to the bagel tent, only to be told, as I stand in the shade to save my feet, that we have to go to the main stage. I run to get shoes and catch up with the group. The bike path is closed by attendants so that we can cross; the place is very busy. Booths all over the place and people wandering.
The main stage is a beehive. People mill around under reasonably efficient control of the event staff.
"Hi, I'm Kevin. What's your name?" He's the leader of the spaceship team.
"I'm Larry. How long has this contest been running? I never heard of it."
"This is our second year."
"I saw you were prepared, with a profile for your ship. What do you, plan this?"
"Yes. Two months or so before the event we send around an Email to find out how many people are interested. Then we get together and start throwing ideas out. When one seems to take over we work out how to make it. That outline was made last night by one of our people."
On the stage dancers throw themselves around to execrable imitation music. Sampling is to music what word processing is to writing: easy tools, but the skills still take time to learn. Many people don't bother.
"Why'd they bring us up here so early?"
I'm tempted to leave. I see no chance for us to win anything. I also remember feeling the same thing at Santa Cruz. Finally the dancers bounce off the stage and the MC starts to announce the sculpture contest. The usual fluff, and then the judges are introduced. That's odd. They don't introduce any of the people who did the work. The athlete must be famous because he gets more applause than the others.
David and I stand there, waiting. They start with the Judges' Special Award, otherwise known as Honorable Mention. It goes to one of the other teams; David and I look at each other and say, nearly simultaneously, "That was our best chance." Third prize goes to the spaceship, and Kevin walks up to the stage to accept the trophy. It's a thick slab of acrylic, carved on top to simulate a wave, with the event information etched into the back below that. They're in graded sizes. Second prize goes to another team.
By this time I've pretty well tuned out, and am staying just because moving is too much work. Another also-ran, another victory for size. Who will it be? I don't much care. All I'm thinking is that in two weeks I'm going to do a real sculpture. Good sand, plenty of time, no economic justification. I daydream about designs.
"And now we have first prize. Drum roll, please." But there's no drummer. "First prize goes to . . . Continental Development Corporation!"
I wake up, late, and David also looks surprised. We look at each other as if to confirm what we heard. Finally we get moving, up the stairs to the stage where the MC hands David the trophy. I give the crowd a thumbs-up. Scattered applause accompanies our walk off the stage. Ten seconds of fame.
6. Aftermath (Where'd the Energy Go?)
"I heard you won!"
"Yes, Rich."
"I went back to get my pack and just happened to walk past when they were announcing the results. Congratulations!" We shake hands.
There really isn't anything like winning. I can see how people could become addicted to it.
Ernie comes up. "Congratulations!"
"Yah, we brought home the gold. I couldn't have done it without you."
Back at the site I shoot some final video, including some of David with the trophy.
"I can't believe it. I thought we were dead last, from the way the judges looked."
"They must have liked the difference."
"Yah. Well, we earned it." We exchange a final handshake, and I think about ways to improve the sculpture. Next year? Maybe.
Getting my kit back to the bike takes two trips. Getting home takes what energy is left. First prize. Amazing. I feel some pride. Difficult conditions have been overcome and we did it. My own judgement says "It's just a sand sculpture in a local contest," but the internal judge can't completely quash the warm glow of pride.
George comes by and we sit on the porch, letting the breeze cool us. It's a lovely evening, and nice to get out of the relentless summer sun.
Take that, you "bigger is better" believers. On this day, with this improbable group of judges, a small sculpture rose over you all. A victory means as much as a defeat: not much. All that matters is the sand.
Noise and bustle wash over me. Glasses start to tinkle. By the time I've become alert enough to understand, picked up the camcorder, turned it on and gotten it pointed in the right direction, Eldwin and Jennifer have already kissed.
"Larry, you look tired."
"Yah. That's what I get for doing eight hours of work yesterday in four hours." The banquet drags on. My patience really wears thin on the way home but I don't run into anything and am finally able to fall into bed. This was just too much.
7. Addendum (The Debate: Inside Frame Vs. Outside)
The first tool I made was the Loop Tool. Based on a design I saw in Ted Siebert's book, this is a good multipurpose carving tool. Its square end, however, isn't good for reaching inside a narrow opening because the blade is parallel to the sand surface.
Hold your index finger against a vertical surface. The blunt end doesn't dig in very well, but imagine your fingernail extended, curved downward and made of steel. I'd used my fingers to carve the insides of sculptures for years but improved packing technique led to problems. Fingernails just aren't tough enough. So, I made the Steel Finger.
The first one was just a bent strip of steel attached to a simple wooden handle in what I came to call an "inside frame" design: the handle was below the blade when the tool was in use, the idea being to make the tool's working end as compact as possible. The tool didn't work very well because the blade extended too far beyond the last screw, and bent upward as soon as I put much pressure on it.
I made a new Steel Finger with a short blade and lightweight handle, also in the inside frame style. It's a good tool, but as I carve with the side of the blade sand packs up because the handle is in the way. The Loop Tool doesn't have this problem; nothing prevents free fall of carved sand.
Still, the finger was enough of a success that I made a smaller version with a shorter handle and narrower blade. Because of the way I bent the blade, I made this tool with an outside frame. It's a great tool, useful in many different situations.
Encouraged, I made a wider version: the Steel Thumb. Actually, this turned into two tools, a prototype and the final version. The prototype's frame is outside, the final one's inside. I thought the sand-packing problem would be taken care of by its wider blade.
Two strokes showed the error of that thought. Even with the blade extending well away from the wooden handle, sand gets stuck and prevents effective carving.
To be efficient, a tool has to do a job and stay out of the user's way as much as possible. Any tool causes problems as it solves them, and requires some learning. Is it worthwhile to learn? Does it do a good job, or is it mainly productive of frustration? A good tool is graceful and beautiful, but it has no purpose unless it is also useful.
One point is just that: a point. No trend is established, no prediction can be made. Two points start to make meaning. Two of my "finger" type tools see frequent use while two others spend a lot of time in the tool tub. Both of the effective ones are outside frame. This looks to me like a trend.
Written July 1
Edited and amended July 5
Updated 2017-12-13 to replace Photobucket link, and to add images found recently in an archive
Postscript: I talked with someone about the 2003 Heal the Bay contest. An "anti-ringer" ordinance had been passed: everyone working on the sculpture had to be an employee of the company that entered. I walked to the contest, having remembered just in time, and either because of the no-ringer clause or something else the sculptures were lame. Small and badly made. I don't know if the contest survived another year.
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