98F-18 "Social Work 2"
98F-18 "Social Work 2" | ||
|
|
|
|
| As much fun as free-pile sculptures are, they still don't allow the radical engineering I enjoy so much. Is there a way to make a formed sculpture without carrying all that industrial equipment to the beach? |
| Build number: | 98F-18 (lifetime start #146) |
| Title: | "Social Work 2" |
| Date: | November 14 |
| Location: | Venice Breakwater, south side |
| Start: | 1015; building time: 4.5 hours |
| Height: | 2.5 feet |
| Base: | 1.6 feet, cylindric |
| Photography: | roughly 20 exposures E100S with Pentax WR |
|
A minimal tool set goes into the pack, along with water and such lunch materials as I can scavenge. This winds up being the very model of a balanced diet: Andi's oatmeal-raisin cookies and four apples.
On the pack's outside I use a bungee cord to attach my short form and its support ring. Clanging merrily, I walk west. The day is warm and bright. Classic November Santa Ana winds have reduced winter to a rumor from the east; here, my main worry will be sunburn. Simon is in the breakwater tower, coming out as I approach to extoll the virtues of southern California. It's why we're not in Kansas any more. Good sand was available in a thin surface layer, with not too many shells. I scraped that off with my hands, having forgotten to bring a better tool, then used the coarser underlying sand to build the sculpture's base. "There are no big jobs, just small tools." LeTourneau, the heavy equipment maker, said that. I agree. The pile that would have gone up quickly with my usual kit takes nearly forever with the little collapsible bucket and my hands as shovels. I've biased this compromise too far toward portability. Rich walks up as I'm making slurry for a last addition to the pile. The bucket collapses at the wrong time, spilling the slurry. There's no substitute for a real bucket; I'll just have to figure out how to get it down here if I don't want to ride the bicycle. The finished pile is reasonably solid and consistent. I also forgot a tamping stick so was using the big loop tool to tamp, rather to its distress. It worked well enough.
Virginia, Dean and I had played in the sand the previous night, digging holes, sliding, running and getting generally sandy before adjourning to the ice cream store. Now Steve has Dean at the beach so Virginia can work uninterrupted at home. This is a new experience for all of us; Dean is used to sharing sand work but his control leaves a bit to be desired. We offer him alternative piles to carve, but he wants to be in the middle of it, as usual. He gets the hint, or perhaps it's the slow pace of my work that leads him to wander off. Wait until you're older, Dean. Then I'll make a pile just for you. The sculpture starts from an idea I'd had for some time: a tall, thin freestanding tower that spreads at its base. With the little knife I outline this shape. It's not all that exciting, so I work in a shallow concave curve to make the tower's top spring outward. Bruce, the lifeguard, was relocated in the spring so I haven't seen him for months. Suddenly, there he is. "I was watching you last night, with the young woman and the baby." He's recently been moved to one of the Santa Monica towers. "That was you in the tower?" "Yes. I was feeling lazy so didn't visit." "Yah, you had so much to do, watching all three of the people in the water." He smiles. "Did you find a new place to live?" "Yes. We're right in Venice, in a 1906 building." He walks off to check on his illegal cat. Counterclockwise from the tower I carve a deep slot. That suggests a hanging concave panel, so I define that with the small knife and hollow behind it. The original idea for its curving support disappears after a few more distractions and turns into a fairly traditional pair of curved legs meeting behind the panel. On the previous Wednesday, I'd taken over a sculpture class at a local school, showing slides and talking about the students' models of site-specific sculptures. There's a first time for everything, and I left hoping I'd been graceful enough to encourage them rather than alienate.
"We knew you were nervous, but I think you did it well." David is one of the students; his model had been for a re-working of the plaza on Olvera Street near downtown Los Angeles and would be a big improvement over what's there now. "I'm glad you think so. Thanks." Big waves boom against the breakwater. I'm well below the tide line, and there's still a lot of sand to carve. "Here's a tool. Have fun." Silently he starts carving, as intent on it as I usually am. Today, however, distractions rule the day. I'm not in the mood to fight it, so when people want to chat I respond. I still don't take these smaller sculptures very seriously, and this one is more a grown-up small sculpture than a scaled-down big one.
As I parked my bike against the fence after the sculpture class on Wednesday, a pedestrian passed. "That's like a truck!" "Yes. It works well for my sand sculpture equipment." This brings him to a stop, so I hand him an information sheet. On Friday I get a call; his name is Walt and he wants to see a sculpture. He spends a few hours on the beach, watching people come and go as the sculpture takes shape. David's carving is quite intricate. He uses the small knife to make tight bas-relief curves, then the steel pinky to cut behind. A chunk of sand spalls off, giving him the opportunity to work that into his design. "That's a disadvantage of sand. The advantage, for me, is how it feels." "Yes. It feels like velvet." He has been using his fingers to smooth the curves. "You should be here on the rare days when the sand is best. That feels like silk." It happens maybe once per year. With the concave face well established, I work farther around. This seems like a good place for a separation, so I cut behind the right leg and hollow out below the face. Another way to handle the big job/small tool problem is to reduce the size of the job. The engineering demands are reduced and delicacy becomes more important. A small sculpture can have just as much detail as a larger one. I wonder where the limit is on this.
This sculpture winds up appearing bigger than it is. The few other short form sculptures I've done were big sculptures, reduced. I couldn't fit many elements into the smaller pile. Now I'm coming from the other direction; this is the biggest sculpture I've done in two months and there's a lot packed into it. Not as much as there could be, but David's work shows there's a lot of room yet for reducing detail size. Why do I make the shapes I do? As Rich points out, it's easy to see where my work leaves off and David's begins. This is good. His curves are very tight, and would be hard for me to rub into my trademark smoothness. A big part of why I sculpt at all is to make those wonderful curves by gently massaging them, but what he has done is interesting. A crack appears in the base, below the concave panel. That last little pocket was a little too much, but it did make the initial tower more interesting. I start cleaning up. Rich leaves, to join the shape-note singers in Long Beach. David follows a few minutes later, having run out of time on his parking meter. Suddenly I'm alone and I start looking at the sculpture. It's a little clumsy in spots, so I rework those with a delicate touch. Mainly I work to remove square edges, leading panels to meet more smoothly and end in tenuous curves. The sun works westward. I use tiny tools to carve details. When Kate, the instructor whose class I took over, walks up with a friend I don't recognize her. At the school, she was trying to do ten things at once. Here she's much more relaxed and has her son with her, along with a friend and her son. The boys head for the water, of course.
"Some of the students, the quieter ones, came up to me after the class and said 'That guy's sculptures are really cool.' They enjoyed the presentation." "That's a relief. I've been having all kinds of second thoughts about it." She chases her son all over the beach. It'll help him sleep. I try to photograph them, but I move too slowly. Parts of the sculpture still aren't right. I keep tweaking until the sun has nearly set. When the boys get cold, Kate and company take off. I sit and munch a cookie, then think about real dinner. My steady clanking draws glances from other beach walkers. Simon drives by in the truck and waves. The sun's glorious red-orange ball becomes oblate, then slips below the horizon with a quick green flash.
Original: 98-Nov-15
All contents copyright 1998 by
Larry Nelson Process and builder photographs by Richard Johnson | ||||||||||
98f18rpt.htm 99-January-9
