This illustrated story started as a recent experiment, but its roots are in 1984. I'd had a text-based computer for about a year and was getting interested in writing. Then the Macintosh came out and its ability to combine text with pictures captured my imagination.

Thirteen years later, here's the first real result. Ideas are one thing, reality another. It was five years before I could afford to replace that old computer with a used Mac, whereupon I discovered another reality. A picture is worth only a thousand words and takes all day to make. Still, it's a lot easier to describe things such as a sand sculpture or a flower with an image. That requires computer power, and until now I've always been on the trailing edge of the wave. When tools combine with desire, look out.

My friend Don Tidwell sparked this series of experiments by sending me an HTML filmstrip he made with some photos from his backpacking vacation. This was a couple of months after I was forced by the death of my old SE/30 to buy a new computer. I looked at the source code and thought "I can do that!". Aided by a computer whose speed astonished me every time I opened a big file and reference to Don's code, the first experiment worked but Don and I agreed: the page wasn't as attractive as it could be.

For the second generation I made a background for the photographs and pasted them onto it. This allowed me to choose a good background color and control placement of the images on it. This version was much more attractive.

Then I decided to go all-out and try the design used by Michael Worthington when he put some articles by Mary Wentz on a Web site operated by the Getty Museum. This was much more complicated, with columns and a separate file for background color. I chose the design because it was very handsome, and easy to read on-screen. The result is what you're reading.

This version is all new, with much better image quality. In the month since the first version, I've learned a lot about scanning and image editing. The first scans were done four at a time at screen resolution, then converted to JPEG. I did all further work with the JPEG images: cropping, cleaning them up, adding frames. That all added up to bad technique. This time around, I did all the work on TIFF images; conversion to JPEG was the last step. The background color is also a new file, redrawn to cover wider displays and saved as a GIF because JPEG is designed for photographs, not graphics. The original version worked well enough that I was inspired to keep working at improvements.

I didn't set out to make art. I simply wanted to solve an engineering problem: make an arch from sand. The arch has a life of its own now, however, painting its storied variations in my mind. Only a few of them can be told in sand, which is frustrating but means I don't have to worry about new ideas.

Last year saw a lot of engineering development in my sculptures; this year they turned into something else. Once you learn how to make things, how do you decide what to make? How do you develop your ideas? What ideas do you express? What drives you?

This sculpture took over ten hours to make. Last year's three- or four-hour process has grown until it takes the whole day and all of my being. As each milestone was passed--six hours, seven hours, eight--I wondered how much more I could do. Now I know the answer: sand sculpture goes on until I run out of daylight or energy.

It takes three hours just to make the packed-sand column. With that kind of effort invested before I even start carving, a lot hangs on the choice of ideas to carve.

They have to stand. They have to look good. They have to answer to the inner drive I feel. What I carve these days is far more complex than what I used to do, with more opportunities to mess things up.

They do fall over. If that happens I pack my kit and head home, but so far this year I haven't needed to do that. One collapsed five seconds after I finished and my friend Rich has the only photos. Sand sculpture is built upon failures.

Last year I had a problem. People kept asking how I could spend so much time working on something whose life was so brief, especially if it fell over before completion. After a few hundred repetitions I began to feel they were right. In November a friend loaned me a book about Andy Goldsworthy, a Scottish sculptor who makes beauty with temporary materials: work hard, design, sweat, walk. The obvious care he lavishes on each of his sculptures in ice, stone and wood drew me to his photos repeatedly. My flame was relit.

I got more encouragement when watching a television program taped by my friends Lorna and Rich. Isamu Noguchi, son of an Irish mother and Japanese father and welcome in neither country, made his own way in the United States. He started sculpting early and never stopped, working his way through a wide variety of materials, winding up with hard black granite in his last sculptures. In our youth-worshiping culture the idea of someone staying busy right into his 88th year is very attractive. I plan to carve sand as long as I can carry the stuff. After that, I'll get someone else to carry it.

Illustrated here is a culmination of a long process. You could say this sculpture took six months to make. Something was trying to come out, starting in early spring. I kept going to the beach, working an increasingly long time, and going away not quite satisfied. Each time the tide was right, roughly every two weeks, I'd go down and try again. Concentrate, carve, wonder, each sculpture an experiment, each one an attempt to touch something I couldn't quite see. I could feel it, just beyond my fingertips. Here it is, at least most of it.

This cycle of wandering to completion has run for as long as I've been doing sand sculpture. I get an idea, try to make it. Another try gets me closer, but it usually takes another before I feel I've done it. In these post-Goldsworthy days my ideas have become more complicated. Some days I just don't have the concentration to follow my feelings, or some other idea comes out instead.

Carving this sculpture started with the long arch you see crossing the top. It's an idea I've tried before with varying success; it has wound up being too thin or just not graceful. What I like is a curve that looks as if it's about to explode. It also has to fit with the rest of the sculpture, or, as in this case, allow the rest of the sculpture to grow up around it. Some part of me keeps track of how the pieces fit.

Since doing this sculpture, feeling pretty well complete, I've been playing. Small scale sculptures, done quickly, using only hands and small carving tools. Some photos of them are in the handbuilt sculptures area of the Sculpture Garden.

They all start from the same beginning: a solid column of sand 21 inches across and a little over four feet tall. The cylindric shape comes from my lightweight form, which is much more portable than the more usual plywood. From the first cut many decisions diverge; I couldn't duplicate a sculpture if I wanted to.

The pile does have a voice in the carving. If I run out of ideas that will fit within this form, I'll make another, perhaps tapered or stepped.

With the increasing complexity I'm unable to plan sculptures in detail, or think about where all the connections will go. A sculpture like this wants a light touch, letting the undefined guide work through my hands while my mind handles the engineering. I find the process fascinating.

There will be more.

text and photos by Larry Nelson

Top of Page

Library

Human Touch Museum