99F-7 "Just in Time"

They invite touch, the curl of warm fingers around smooth wood. Stainless steel screws glint against cunningly bent sheet stainless. They're just tools, but I itch all through the week to try them.

Build number:	99F-7 (lifetime start #163)
Title:	"Just in Time"
Date:	July 2
Location:	Venice Breakwater, south side
Start:	0700; building time : 10.5 hours
Height:	4.4 feet
Base:	1.75 feet (cylindric)
Photography:	one roll RA w/LX and 85mm

Hands are the original tools. Each one comes with multiple independently addressable subtools that reach around corners and dig sensitively. A spoon enabled greater precision until it ran into lakeside silty sand and bent double. The same obdurate sand demonstrated the limits of soft hands digging and scratching; the tools that worked so well with older technology just bounced off this new kind of pile. Like a railroad builder working in his first mountain range, I needed dynamite. I found it in my backpacking kit. The tent stake was strong enough to drive into hard ground. I knew it would have an effect on the sand but beyond that had no idea. So I went on my way, using equipment that wasn't really suited to the job because it was cheap and available, and it worked. Through many sculptures, the tent stake taught me how to carve. Ocean beach sand didn't pack into such hard piles so I could use my hands in the hollows after starting with the stake. The carving technique required openings big enough for hands, or straight-in access. Then Bert Adams dropped a bomb on me. First by making me enter his contest, then by giving me a copy of Ted Siebert's "The Art of Sandcastling." I won the contest with my tent stake and Naugahyde forms, and then the bomb went off. The sand sculptor became a tool maker, first following suggestions in Siebert's book and then striking off on my own. Recognize a sculpture problem, make a tool to solve it in a spiralling revolution. Solid overcast anchored on mountains covers clear air. A fitful breeze tries to keep me cool, but this is after all July and carrying sand is just plain work. It's full of shells and gravel, making the filtering process much more work than usual. What goes into the form, however, is fine and packs well. As I make the last addition to the pile, the rising tide fills the borrow pit which was lower than usual due to erosion. That 7A start was a good idea. This is supposed to be another simplified sculpture, with an arch broken into two overlapping parts at the top. After that's roughed in, a remnant of sand projects northward, making suggestions. Rich walks up around noon. He's the vice president in charge of kite flying, and has a new kite for wind that won't support the nice box kite. We assemble it and it seems eager to fly. When launched it ascends smartly, then dives sharply to the left, burying its nose. Made in China, of course, but we already knew it's a communist country. Or maybe it was made by the Shanghai Plastic Anchor Company. The box kite, sensing competition, leaps from my hand and floats on the sea wind. Rich is determined to make the goose fly, but I leave him to it. There's much more sand to move. Where does time come from? It must be made of experience, daylight and heartbeat; in the winter I rush, but the summer allows me to find that ceiling where time, energy and ideas run out together. Why make an eight-hour sculpture on a 13-hour day? Thus disappears the simple plan. New tools also have a say in the plan, especially the #2/2 Steel Finger. The original was a long strip of stainless bent into a crooked finger, attached to a wooden handle. Its handle didn't support the steel well enough, so I rebuilt it to provide the needed rigidity. It was more useful, but at the same time I was learning about how weight affects tools and this one was too heavy. So, I put everything I'd learned into the /2 model, whose blade is only five inches long but carried on a carved long birch handle. I soon get a chance to try the new Steel Finger in hollowing out beneath the arch. It works well, being light enough to maneuver easily and rigid enough to carve this dense pile easily. Its curved blade, attached to the handle's top, makes smooth cuts as it widens the space and the projecting tip digs easily into places I couldn't have reached without it. The result is a smooth hollow that passes under the arch. The arch grows a lobe projecting into the hollow. The pile is so hard that rubbing curves to where I want them takes forever. It looks as if this sculpture isn't going to have any of the big spaces the other new tool is designed for, so I try it on the outside. This one is the #21 Shaver, with a four-inch blade attached across the end of an arching handle. The working edge of the blade is bent back toward the user, instead of projecting, and sharpened. The design idea was that it would carve more easily this way, reducing the pressure I'd have to apply, so making it possible to work on thin sections without destroying them. Any good tool is, however, useful for more than its design purpose, so I try it on the arch's lumps. True to its name it carves delicately and is easily controlled by varying the handle's angle. Neither tool is good for heavy digging because sand packs up between blade and handle. That's why I have the loop tools; they're self-cleaning. The multiplicity of ways to carve sand brings on "tool dither:" which tool should I use now? And where is it in this tubful? This doesn't happen when you have one tool. Nor do sculptures like this. With the tent stake some of this piece would have been impossible; it doesn't go around corners and there are lots of them here. I want every element to contribute to the design instead of just holding something else up, so they spin, twist, curve, duck in and out and then pop out somewhere else. It's a game I play: can I imagine a sculpture so complex that I can't manufacture it? "I swam in from the boat just to see your sculpture." "Simon! It's good to see you again." The lifeguard boat, his current assignment, is several hundred feet offshore. "How do you like working on the boat?" "It's great. Nice change of pace. How's the sculpture going?" "There were some rough times in early spring; I thought I was running out of ideas. Things came back together a couple of months ago." "Well, this one's looking good." "Thanks. It's far from what I set out to do, but it's a good day." "That's true," Rich says. "It's one of the year's best." "I'm going up to the tower. I'll see you guys later." "Bye, Simon." There are days for complexity and days for simplicity. Most of the time I try for complexity regardless of what shape I'm in, but today I'm strong and everything is fitting together. Each thin surface between spaces is mapped in my mind and the tool ends stay where they belong. This is a design choice: to cut through or not, with advantages each way. Accidental cut-throughs don't please me. Still, I'm feeling the effects of the work. "Rich, I think I'll have to downsize again." "Oh, this one's coming out OK. Some of your recent ones, yes, they've been good sculptures on decorated pedestals. This one's better." Time, energy, complexity. These are mixed inextricably in any sculpture; change one and the others follow in some strange mathematics of self-expression. Ideally every sculpture would be good everywhere, but that requires a balance different from what happened today. The top broken arch drops on the west, curving northward, then taking a sharp dogleg south around to end in a concave flourish. The east leg is steeper and rounder, wrapping around into the space just beneath the arch. It continues down, tucking in behind a block I left for contrast. The leg's line continues in and then out, to the bottom. On the south it slips behind a broad panel that rises across the sculpture, ending below the hollow piece that projects southward from the arch. The only thing left of the original idea is the broken arch's overlapping ends. "The pieces fit." "Yah." I'm still not happy. This has been a very intense piece, and I enjoyed the relaxed fun of the last two. It's a piece that will look good in the portfolio: "How in the world did you do THAT?" It still leaves unanswered many questions, and many elements that are the basic curved slabs. It lacks the aetherial beauty of the last one, being more an expression of what is possible than what I really want. Complexity multiplies options. As I clean up the sculpture I think about alternatives. I could have done this, or this, or maybe this. I make a few subtle changes, defining an edge here, softening a curve elsewhere. Subtle hints carved in the sand will lead the eye to make different interpretations. I wanted the lower third to have better definition, but I'm tired enough to make silly engineering mistakes that will bring the whole thing down. It's delicate enough already. Right now I'm too tired to make any good judgement. I hope a faster than usual shutter speed compesates for my fatigued shaking; there's plenty of daylight left and enough work to keep me busy for another hour, but I'm finished. I make a last walkaround but don't really see anything. I'll have to see this one in photographs. The back tire on my bicycle is flat. The walk home is long, pushing this unwieldy load. No moment is ever repeated. I'll just have to keep on looking for the magical sand sculpture. I do have delightful new tools to help in the search.

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