99F-2

It's becoming apparent that the wooden sculpture just won't happen. Wood, or some other more adaptable material, would enable more complex ideas and more time to think about them. Set against those advantages are the problems: the materials are hard and relatively expensive. More to the point, the sculpture would turn into another project.

Build number:	99F-2 (lifetime start #158)
Date:	April 24
Location:	Venice Breakwater, south side
Start:	0930; building time not tracked
Height:	4.6 feet (form 3.7 feet with free-pile tower and balls added)
Base:	1.75 feet (cylindric)
Photography:	half a roll RA w/XA2; half a roll RA w/LX and 85mm

Great towers of luminous clouds fill the sky. I wish the road ran up among them; riding a bicycle through the glowing vaporous canyons would be a decent lifetime's exploration. I have to be satisfied with looking up from asphalt-bound rattling wheels. It's a perfect day for sand sculpture. Unfortunately, the sand doesn't go with the cool day. There is good sand, but it's in a thin layer that takes too long to collect by itself, so I use the mixture below the fine layer. As the tide recedes, I keep looking for better but there isn't any. The sky darkens and the western horizon disappears as I work. It looks a lot like rain, with streamers of blowing low-level clouds and steely grey-green water. A few sprinkledrops fall but that's it. All that happens is a steady breeze, so I launch the colorful box kite Rich gave me and it floats up there, unconcerned with design questions or sand engineering. "You've just unveiled it?" "Yes. This one's a little shorter because the sand isn't the best." "I've seen some of your sculptures, but never the starting point." His name is Deyo, and he lived in Maine not far from where I was for a time. We talk under the blowing sky of trees and children and how we appreciate having grown up in places where we could easily find silence. I don't have much of an idea today. Perhaps it's an oversufficiency of ideas and I simply can't decide. I start with cutting the top back on two sides, making a broad corner that becomes a tower separated from the rest. I want to extend this, so I gather some fine sand and free-pile a little tower on the beach and carve it to the rough shape. Picking it up is a problem; it cracks. Building the pile in place atop the tower seems like asking for trouble, but suddenly I realize it's no different from making any other four-foot-tall free-pile sculpture. Delicately I place handfuls of dripping sand and build it up eight inches or so, then carve to shape. On top of that I put two hand-made balls; the whole assembly makes a good finial. Around to the tower's right I start a hollow. It connects with a hollow left of the tower, which is bounded by a long curving panel. This is supposed to arch up, making the sculpture's top wrap around the tower, but it never looks very good and is gradually cut back. The big design problem is with elements that end partway up the pile. What do I do with the sand below them? It's very difficult to make it look like anything other than a piece whose only purpose is to support the upper element. There has to be a better way to handle this. Engineering demands, however, have a strong influence on what I make. There's a broad concave panel on the east side of the top; it uses nearly the full width of the pile and has to be supported. This has ramifications all the way down, allowing no deep undercuts, which leads to the cylindric look I dislike. Decoration ameliorates this somewhat, but it's still not what I want. What do I want? It used to be simple: just make something, and if it stood at the end of the day call it successful. Then I started wanting parts to do more than stand there; they had to look interesting in themselves. Then I noticed the spaces, and wanted those to be interesting as well. Next, I started wanting the overall outline to be interesting, and this is proving very difficult: how to fit all those interesting parts and spaces into a fixed volume. Complexity leads to cylinderosis. I think I'll have my hands full for a long time. Even if I do a sculpture every week. Subtle shaping helps the parts that simply have to be there, and other areas of the sculpture make up for it. The southwest aspect is great, with dramatic shadows in the afternoon light, and the ball-topped tower for balance. Eventually all the sand that I believe can be safely removed is gone. I'm out of concentration, too. There's still lots of daylight left, but I clean up the sculpture and sign it. I lean against my carrier and relax. Influx of solar BTUs just about balances the cold wind that also balances the kite over my head. Rich said he might come down, so I'm in no hurry to leave. The clouds are gone except for a few seen dimly through vaporous air. Sailboats move along briskly, heeled far over on the sparkling water. I found an Olympus XA2 at a garage sale. Today is its test, along with that of the Pentax LX I cooked on the heater a couple of months ago. I hope one of them works. I need to start bringing the big camera again, but it adds much weight and work. Maybe next time. The light softens nicely as the sun descends. I shoot a few last frames and decide Rich isn't coming. I'm cold and hungry for something other than Force Primeval Bars. This one isn't a howling success. It may be some time before I get another one of those. The sculptures are more complicated, and the process of making them is also more complicated, with many more conflicting demands to balance. "Remember, success is 99 per cent the refusal to accept failure." Although it's looking more like work, sculpture is still done out here in real time with the waves wind and rain. Tony, a passerby, and I talk about creativity. We need it. Technical note: The scans are from negatives shot with the "new" XA2. It worked perfectly, doing exactly what I asked: meter the scene based on having 200-speed film. I was using 100, so the negs are one stop underexposed. This made the scanning more difficult than I would have expected; prints look OK, but the scanner is more sensitive.

Top of Page Library Human Touch Museum 1999 Sculptures 1998 1997 1996 1995 All contents copyright 1999 by Larry Nelson lord_chaos@compuserve.com Written 99 April 25 Quote is from Charles Sheffield, "The Cyborg from Earth"

99f02rpt.htm 99 May 15