98P-20 "Less Larry"
98P-20 "Less Larry" | |
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| Of the day's many possible activities, I choose scanning more of Bert's slides. The new software makes this go better than expected, but still, by noon I need to do something different. It's too late to make the concert, and I don't feel very social anyway. |
| Build number: | 98P-20 |
| Title: | "Less Larry" |
| Date: | November 6 |
| Location: | Venice Breakwater, south side |
| Start: | 1400; building time: approx. 2.5 hours |
| Height: | 3 feet |
| Base: |
3 feet X 2 feet, excluding tails |
| Photography: | approx. 15 exp E100S w/Pentax WR |
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The day is radiant. Sand and water sparkle under a flood of sunlight. The beach has eroded back, losing most of the sand built up in October and leaving bluffs at the top. People use these for benches. I've used them for bas-relief sculpture, but the sand up there is coarse and just damp enough to give me confidence until everything carved peels off in a sheet. Venice Beach has also been rearranged. Where the sand was good last week, it's now coarse. Find sand is even more important for free-pile sculpture than for formed because only fine sand retains water long enough for the sand to become packed. Another problem is the peripheral sand. Because the pile is made of a stack of uncontained layers, the outer inch or so of each layer never gets compacted. Would the sharp tools help trim this off, so I could get at the more solid sand inside? When I find decent sand, I have the opposite problem. The fine deposit is so far down the beach that water is still seeping from it, making my growing pile very wet. The only thing I can do is pack slowly. That's not really a problem. I'm slow today anyway. Something's missing. For years I've read about "artists' communities." Artists are supposed to gather in bunches, contributing to each other's work. My experience of communities suggests that such a group would end up at the lowest common level, so I've never really believed in the concept. I'm used to doing things by myself. A lifetime of knowing that few, if any, people share my interests has trained me to go out and do what I want. Most of the time I don't even think about looking for company. Too many people sit around waiting for someone to help them or join them or encourage them. I'd rather do than wait. It isn't until I get home after this sculpture that I finally figure out what's missing. For the last year, Larry Dudock and I have been in regular Email contact, talking mainly about sand sculpture. We send images back and forth, ideas along with them. In October he started working for an outfit in Washington, DC and promptly lost all his free time. No sand sculpture, little Email. There's nothing like losing something to show me how big a part it had become in my life. So, the pile goes up slowly and sloppily. It acts more like a colloid than temporary stone. One end keeps slumping; this is a case where a small form would help hold things together down there and allow for better packing on top. Maybe some boards, a foot wide and a couple of feet long, bound with straps. It'd be easy to carry, but would also restrict the freedom of shape that hand-built sculpture offers. When the time finally comes to sculpt, shells and rocks are a bigger problem than poor compaction. Carving requires a delicate touch, approaching the desired shape slowly in case there's a shell in the element. Fast carving would simply tear it out. I'd intended a more monolithic pile, but it ended up with the common "howling coyote" profile. There's a short tower at one end of the main pile. It gets carved deeply concave, leaning west, with the main pile's support undercut and curved to match. The tower becomes hollow, connecting vertically with a passage through the main pile. The receding tide left pools and rippled sand behind. A family plays in the pools. In great contrast with the more usual "Stay out of there; you'll get wet!" this group plays. The children run through the water up to their waists. Parents follow, wallowing, and the kids pile on top. Everyone's laughing. They're all made of sturdy stuff; I'm cold just from the slight breeze and wet knees. This sculpture is relatively small, which contributes to good development. I have time to consider how everything looks, and define each element well. The shells cause problems, but also make for nice spots of color and contrast. Various panels wrap around the east end, ending abruptly to make shadows. It's traditional, but still looks OK. It lacks the excitement of earlier sculptures, ending up looking like a combination of an earlier formed sculpture with a free-piler. Late light paints it gold and makes nice shadows from the long sinuous extensions around the base. I guess it's not bad for a solo effort. The walk home is rather lonely. This surprises me. There's obviously something to the artist community idea, which is why people keep doing it. I'll get used to solo sculpture again, but it was great fun while it lasted. There are many people here who encourage me and like what I do, but talking with someone who's actively exploring the same medium is completely different. There's a shared drive forward, and talking about the process exposes assumptions, suggesting different ways to think and make. From Turtle Hill I watch the sun set, a pumpkin aflame disappearing. A half-circle, a chord, a line, a spark and gone behind blue-green horizon. | ||||||||||
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All contents copyright 1998 by
Larry Nelson Original: 1998 November 7
HTML conversion: November 20 | ||||||||||
98p20rpt.htm 99 February 13