Who Knows?
"Friday: patchy rain showers, windy. Saturday: rain showers, heavy at times, windy."
"Friday: clear and cool, breezy in the canyons. Saturday: heavy rain all day. Sunday: heavy rain."
"Friday: a few light showers. Saturday partly cloudy and windy. Sunday: heavy rain."
Et cetera. Take your pick. I wonder if any of these people actually stick their heads outside their offices. The sole common element seems to be heavy rain on Sunday, so any sculpting must be done Saturday.
In the end I'm left with the usual decision-making technique. I'll get up and see what the weather is doing, and if it isn't raining, I'll head out.
I really need to do a sculpture. The week has been long and devoid of grace. I feel like the marathon runner who can see the finish line.
Build number: 02M-12 (lifetime start #259); 2 units on individual risers.
Title: none
Date: December 21
Location: Venice Breakwater, south side high tide line
Start: 0730, construction time 6.5 hours
Unit A: 29 inches tall, 19 inches diameter, immersion screened native sand (Short Form)
Unit B: 27 inches tall, 19 inches diameter, immersion screened native sand (Short Form)
Plan: Unit A on elongated riser, with borrow pit on west and south. Unit B on small riser, using A's borrow pit and some sand from north and west. Big waves filled the borrow pit with sand. Rain terminated the project before the basal area could be developed fully.
Helpers: none
Digital Images: 28, with Canon Powershot G2
Photo 35mm: none
Photo 6X7: none
Photo volunteer: Rich, w/Canon Z115
Video motion: none (camcorder left at home deliberately)
Video still: none
Video volunteer: Larry Dudock, w/Elura under John's umbrella
New Equipment: none
Note: includes remarks on 02R-1 (imaged), 02R-2 (no images) and 02R-3 (imaged)
1. Rain
Rain really doesn't hurt sand sculpture. I've been caught in a number of storms and have noticed that the water just drains through the sculpture while leaving interesting texture on the outside.
No, the problem with rain isn't the water. It's the cold. Winter sculpture is a very fine balance of clothing and cold. As long as it's dry, and I'm working steadily, I can stay warm enough with reasonable clothes. Add rain to the mix and I no longer stay warm. Lose delicacy through heavy clothes or shivering. Take your pick. I prefer to pack and leave.
I awaken to rainwater dripping from the eaves onto the leaf-filled back yard. It's illuminated by moonlight, however, so the rain must have ended. A look out the front door shows thin clouds lazily cruising under that bright moon. We have commitment.
Add to the rain the problem of tide. It's very high this morning. It will be aided by what I'm sure will be big storm surf. Normally I'd just wait it out and start the sculpture just after the tide's peak, but today I have a feeling that there's no time to waste. The window is open now but could slam shut at any time. Let's go.
2. Beach
Gone is summer's lazy, endless-day pace. Gone also are autumn's short days of confident sunshine. This is winter. Brawling, inconstant, teasing. You prepare or stay indoors. The only thing the one-day beach sand sculptor can count on is a shortage of light. Be quick, my son, for the monster is out there, holding wind and rain and you never know when it will show up, nor from what direction. Be quick.
The ocean is chaos. Waves, big ones, hammer the breakwater and spume flies into the grey sky. Squalls hide parts of the western horizon but hints of sunlight come through inland. My chosen building site is about 100 feet farther east than the last one, due to erosion of the beach by the storms.
It's about an hour and a half before high tide. I start digging and a huge wave promptly comes in, covers this area that hadn't been hit in several minutes, and takes everything away. I move ten feet up the beach and start again. This site is also immediately hit, but not so strongly. Maybe I should move to the Boardwalk, but even it wouldn't be too safe. Farther south, that 100 feet of disappeared beach has brought the water very close to the lifeguard headquarters building.
There is no plan for the sculpture, other than to make sure I can leave as soon as real rain hits. A multiple seems to fit the day because I can do as much as there's time for: if the day starts to fall apart, just do one quick sculpture and call it good. If it's stable, try for something more complex. On days like this flexibility is important.
The Quick Filter helps greatly with being flexible. Use whatever sand is available and screen most of the junk out of it. There's plenty of junk, too, leaves and fragments that plug even this screen. I have to dump out the detritus after every addition. Still, it goes quickly.
Too quickly. My site is still being hit by waves, so I set up the form again on a new base and make a second pile. It's not as close to the first as I wanted, but those boisterous waves have redesigned my borrow pit. I'd forgotten that under these conditions erosion happens while you watch.
By the time the second pile is finished, the waves have reluctantly quit trying to take out the sculpture. A few love pats still arrive but the big bases resist their blandishments. I can start carving.
3. Sculpture
The Santa Monica Mountains have been erased. Downtown Santa Monica is veiled in grey. Watery sunshine bathes my patch of beach as I take a tool to the sand.
This means I have to come up with an idea. Multiples require more sculpture ideas and 11 of them have reduced my backlog. Amid all the plans I made for this day--assembling kit, thinking about the tide and rain and alternatives--I forgot to think about what to do if I did get a chance to put tool to sand. Quit thinking. Start carving.
One broad swipe with the Sand Knife tells me that my packing wasn't the best. Probably too much sand in each screen load. It's as good as an unfiltered pile, which will require a careful touch and good engineering. Eventually a broad panel curves over and around the top, with a hollow cut out on the northeast. The other side gets cut away into a bigger space, inviting a series of small holes and ribs under that slab of top.
Larry has my Steel Fingers, the whole batch. He was supposed to have been here by now to return them, but I wind up carving the details with alternative tools. I've tried to introduce him to carving with what's available, but he's not interested. So I do it myself, using tools not designed for this task in unusual ways to carve what I want. The advantage of doing this is that it keeps me sharp. The carver is more important than the tool; it's my hand telling the tool where to go, and failures can be seen as failures in imagination. Don't have the right tool? Figure out how to make the wrong tool work. Run what you brung. The result here is good, if less smooth than could be done with the Steel Finger.
Tools do have one real advantage. They can cut more delicately than a real flesh and blood finger can, and I have to restrain myself from getting my hands in there to shape the parts directly. Older sculptures were robust enough to stand up to hand work, but modern ones require a tool's sharp edge.
Larry finally shows up shortly after I start working on Unit B. He hands me my tools, and the handles that a woodworking shop made from my models. They are decent copies of my designs, right down to the assymetric handles, but they show no real understanding of why they were designed as they were. Despite what Larry says, the real Sandragon Toolworks wouldn't have turned these out. They are slightly rough and slab-sided, lacking the hand-kindliness that characterizes a true Sandragon tool. That's not too surprising, given that modern Sandragon tools have several years of development behind them and that development shows in more than the gross shape.
I'm delighted to have my tools back, and I promptly go back to Unit A and use the Steel Finger to refine the internal structure. I like good tools.
Unit B, at this point, requires no such refinement. Its destiny is to be a shell, an idea that first showed up in 1996 and has never been done very well. In a hurry, reaching into the well of ideas, and this is what comes out. Good enough; just because I've never done it well doesn't mean it can't be done well.
Part of my intent is to echo part of Unit A. Stand at one angle and you see the interior of Unit A and I want to link B with that. As usual, however, the design takes on its own life and the echo doesn't work all that well. Only in superficial features do the designs resemble each other.
As I work on this, Larry pushes his photo album into my face. For one who calls himself sensitive he seems very insensitive to the fact that I'm trying to get a sculpture off before the roof falls in. I take a cursory glance and then ignore him. He stands there for a time and then realizes I'm not there. Choose your time better; the world isn't centered on you and your needs. Wait for an invitation.
Oh, well. It's just nice to be here, a pile of sand before me and a tool in my hand. Storms thrash around offshore, wind comes and goes. Surfers shout at each other, running to get back on the ocean after their wild rides on the big waves.
"Hi, Rich!" He looks different.
"Hi, Larrys." We laugh. "Note the new jacket. Lorna didn't like the other one's football-player shoulders." It has pile lining, and insulation. Just the perfect thing for today's darkening sky.
"I have your camera. It's in the black bag, with my digital. It has batteries but no film."
"Thank you."
Time presses. There's plenty of potential daylight, but curtains of rain are dropping all around us. I continue refining the shapes of Unit B's elements.
"Everyone needs to go through a Rococo period. I may have gone too far with this." It needs simplicity but I can't put the sand back; the only route out is to make the complexity work. Subtle trimming and reshaping helps pull the many small parts together into one large composition.
Space and sand. One project my mother had for me in my visit last weekend was to remount some small shelves that hold her collection of New Mexican Santos.
"This one needs to be about an inch higher."
I hold it up. "About here?"
"Yes. That looks good."
When you've been working together for a lifetime the teamwork gets smooth. I drill a new hole and mount the shelf, bending the brackets so they'll hold the shelf level.
"How's that?"
"Great. Much better. See how the shape of the space around the sculptures holds them together?"
"Yes." Interesting. Everything comes from somewhere. I learned composition from her, all that time spent hanging pictures and such.
The north side of Unit B gets short shrift, a couple of curving slots that don't do much for the design. Things are looking dark. There's a storm coming in from the west, but it looks to be falling apart. Another is farther north and will probably miss us. I start cleaning up, with subtle trimming and the usual brushing.
"Hi, Larry. I'm Bj Cotton-Jeffords."
"Oh! Thanks for coming; I'm glad to meet you." We shake hands. I'd sent an Email to her announcing this sculpture.
"Did you get an invitation?"
"Yes. I haven't called the RSVP line yet. Been too distracted."
"Good. I'll see you there, then." She heads off. I go back to work, trying to manage vanishing resources of energy and time and rain-free beach to finish, or at least come close to finishing. Finally I get the sculptures into pretty good shape but the base needs help.
"I just felt a raindrop."
"Oh, quit worrying. It's just blown in from someplace else." Yes, indeed, but that someplace else is coming our way. My grandfather used to play a game with his hands. "Watch this one," he'd say, circling his right hand. Then he'd reach out with his left and tag us. Well, we just got tagged while I was watching the wrong way.
"I'm out of here."
"Bye, Rich." Big drops pour out of a dark sky. I put on my raincoat and put the camera inside an inverted bucket. Rain hits my hat and soaks through. What's more interesting is how it affects the tops of the sculptures: the drops hit with enough force to dislodge sand, and the top quarter-inch is all torn up. The effect is attractive. Rain falls, tapers off, then increases again.
"That's the clearing-up shower." This comment is aimed at Larry and another man, who has been watching for a couple of hours.
"I'm going to bail also."
"See you later, Larry."
In this case the promise is correct. One last flurry and the rain ends. Sunshine struggles through the clouds to sparkle on the dynamic ocean. I quickly shoot some images. More rain seems to be coming; the western horizon is dark grey and indistinct.
"All right. That's good. Time to get out of here while I'm still fairly dry."
The watcher introduces himself. "I'm John." He has been here most of the afternoon, carrying on animated conversation with other passersby.
"I'm Larry." We chat for a few minutes, watching the light change. I shoot a few more images and then pack up. Most of what I have is wet, and I'm lucky to have my shoes. One extra-energetic wave came in while I was packing and flooded everything. Rainwater has collected inside the cart.
I am very tired. Events are catching up. Once the cart is loaded I decide to take the concrete route home, up the boardwalk. Fortunately it's not crowded.
"Hey, man, did you make a sculpture today?"
I stop and turn. "Yes."
"One or two?"
"Two. They're still there if you want to take a look. Came out pretty well."
"Great." He, one of the vendors, turns to the man beside him. "He makes sand sculptures. Down on the beach."
I pick up the cart's handle and then pick up my feet. Hot food draws me homeward.
It's odd to be home so early from a sculpture. Daylight, what comes in through the clouds, until the sun goes west. Rain starts as I take a shower and I go to sleep to the sound of runoff from the roof.
It'll rain all day. Fine. I got what I needed.
4. Phototropism
I awaken to silence. Moonlight softly fills the backyards. Thin clouds attenuate the light. As I walk to the grocery store I see what should be the day's storm off to the west, reaching, blocking the sun. No problem. I have things to do.
The sun, however, wins the day. The next time I poke my head outside the sky is completely clear. It pulls. I save the report, grab the skateboard and camera, then catch a bus south to West Marine. I need bolts for the new Cercoscreenus.
A playful wind runs through my hair as I push north from West Marine. A skateboard is perfect for days like this. No hurry, cool, beautiful. I detour through the park in Marina del Rey but eventually end up at Venice Beach. For Mirjam I get some shots showing how accurate those predictions of "heavy rain" were.
I walk north at the foot of the long berm of sand scraped up to protect the low-lying parking lot. The high tides have undermined this and caused tall cliffs to form. I've been wondering if I'd get any bas-relief sculptures done this year and here's my chance. I do three. These are actually no longer bas-relief sculptures, their undercut and tunnelled parts turning them into true relief sculptures. These are big, coarse, made with strong arm movements. Subtlety doesn't show against the background. I do three of them, with the middle one not working very well.
Walking farther north I see what looks like the remains of yesterday's sculpture, but that can't be. Must be someone standing there. No, it is the sculpture. Unit A is still about half intact. Unit B is just a stump. To these someone has added a reclining cat, nicely done.
This is neat. A beautiful day, clear, delightful, no destination, open-ended. I push north along the bike path and a man passes me on a bike.
"That must be fun."
"It is." In all its different ways.
Written December 22
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