99F-10 "Visualization Failure"

She sits on the sand, silent, intently watching me carve. When she does speak her voice is high-pitched, blending with the ambient noise, but co-workers have taught me to assemble messages from remnants. The sculpture towers above both of us. "Does it make you sad?"

Build number:	99F-10 (lifetime start #166)
Title:	"Visualization Failure"
Date:	Friday, August 6
Location:	Venice Breakwater, south side
Start:	0930; building time: 9 hours
Height:	4.4 feet
Base:	1.75 feet (cylindric)
Photography:	one roll RA135-24 w/LX and 85mm

The sky is made of cement, but bright patches and lines show the efficacy of the summer sun. I rattle down the bike path through looky-loos watching a film crew at work. A dry cool breeze goes this way and that as I build the base. Locating a sculpture is an art in itself. It needs to be above the coming high tide, but every foot is that much farther to carry sand and water. I use various landmarks and my experience to find the place, visualizing where the water will be in 7 hours. Today I use the line of damp sand made by the previous high tide without considering other references. "Good morning." I look up from loading the filter. She was here last weekend when I was doing the early-morning Skateboard Series. "Good morning." "My friend won't be able to make it today, but I wanted to come down and watch for a time, and take some photographs." "No problem." "I'd also like to help. What should I do?" She doesn't have to ask twice and is soon skimming the good three inches of sand off the beach and toting it up to the building site. "You said you were an electrician?" "Yes, for the City of Los Angeles." "How are they to work for?" "Good benefits, a good wage, the usual frustrations for anyone working in big organization. Not much reward for initiative." "It's similar with the State of California, where I work. I get into trouble regularly. Now they let me do things, such as the exhibit of children's art I've assembled, because it's easier for them." Pile building goes steadily, helped by her muscles and conversation. "I have to go to work now." "Thank you very much for your help." "I didn't do all that much." "Every pound of sand carried by someone else is a pound I don't have to carry, and it helps." I remember Román saying "A little bit of love is still love." "I still want to get photos of the start." "I'll be here in two weeks. After that I'll move back to Saturday." "That will work better for me. I hope this one comes out well." "Thank you." I've been making plans. The one chosen for today is simple to suit my mental capacity.. There will be two shell-like elements at the base with a tall two-legged tower between them. I hope to produce an interesting sculpture by making each element complex and interesting. Sketching in the eastern shell results in a feeling of having done this before so instead making the shell's top edge round I slant it down to the south. At the sculpture's top I carve off great chunks with the Super Slicer, making it narrow but spreading as it descends. The flared part is supposed to cut back in behind the basal shell element. This doesn't work. No matter what I try the sand just doesn't match my mental model. I'm greatly frustrated; when will I be able to make what I should? With a mental shrug I abandon the plan. This one will just be a day with the sun and sand. "I hope you're in the right place." "Hi, Rich." "The book says the next tide is six feet." "I know." I start looking around and realize I'm in trouble. "I think I screwed up. I used the damp sand line to judge where to put this thing, but according to the pipe I'm pretty low. It's too late now. I'll just have to deal with it." I've been wiped out before. Nothing to do now but keep carving. I, in my elitist technically involved way, tend to denigrate "decorated pile" sand sculptures. To me the inside of a sculpture is as important as the outside. Blurring the separation between inside and outside makes for interesting shapes, when it works. The challenge is to make the inside strong in the design sense. The parts have to fit, there has to be room to carve them, the space has to be interesting and allow a view of the hard parts. The whole thing has to stay together, too, while being carved on the fly in one day's light. I've failed at this far more often than I've succeeded. I'm stuck with the original plan's gross upper parts, but there's still enough sand to make subtle adjustments. The topmost element gains a flowing look, starting sharp-edged but softening as it rises gradually to the north. Beneath that is a big space. It was supposed to be a throwaway after the plan failure, but it starts to come alive. Distance disappears. I descend into the sand, the world fades. Nascent shapes suggest others: I could cut this away, wrap it around inside behind this piece, cut it away below and angle it sharply upward. Now it looks too much like the familiar bear's ear, cut it away here, taper it over there, thin it and then thin it some more. Bring this other part around to the ear's base, carve a hollow in it. Make it flow! Attach this other piece down here, make it stand out by undercutting but remember what's on top of it. Oh, yes, that needs some help. Cut it back, round it off, separate it. Wrap this line on around to the south and down. "Well, Rich, even if the tide wipes me out and I never finish the rest, this is a good sculpture." "Yes. It's excellent." The top is open but far from simple. Sand flows every which way, with ribs running from inside to outside and back again. Don't quit. Don't give up. Don't let malformed sand have the last word in the struggle for beauty. Don't accept defaults, things you've done before. Work, think, feel. "Does it make you sad?" Most passersby toss off the same questions and barely pause long enough to listen to the answers. I know they're forgotten within seconds, so I don't put much effort into it. This woman is different. "Sad? Not really." I'm carving a little space behind a subtle point, working delicately with knife and Steel Pinky. "What I enjoy is the making, the process of carving sand. When I'm finished the fun is over." "Rich, I need a laser-guided boring tool for going around corners." The little hollow wants to connect to another around to the south, but I don't know how to get it there. "You'll have to build it yourself." "Yah." "Do you remember all of them?" This stops my hand mid-stroke. I'm working on the south side, trying to make things fit. Her question brings up memories of many sculptures, but not all of them. "I remember vividly the big ones, the ones where I turned a corner or something special happened." In my mind I see "Hinge," done in 1984, my fifth sculpture and the one that taught me there was no shortage of ideas. I see "Brooder" standing on the beach's cusp, silhouetted against a cloudy sunset, very nearly alive and waiting. "Weightless" stands, impossible, some anti-gravity substance in the sand. I remember touching sand, believing in that while looking at yet another improbable product rising from the beach. "Most aren't specifically remembered, the ones that more than anything else just mark a fun day on the beach. But all of them are recorded in my muscles." Right now there's the problem of this sculpture's south side. Yesterday's solutions won't work, although they inform any response I'll make today. The problem is familiarity: I've been here before, and don't want to make the same response to the big inverted arch's need for support. In the end it's a compromise, a modification of the familiar rather than a revolution, but the sculpture stays together. "What do you feel?" Most of the time I'm too busy to feel, or at least to consider it. "It varies. Some sculptures are contemplative, some just happen, but a few come from strong feelings." Larry sent me Email yesterday about a sculpture I did last year, the one for Pieter Wiersma, writing "That page is special." With the Steel Finger's curved end I'm able to get the two spaces closer to each other. I don't have the words to describe feelings. Call it lack of practice. "Some people read what I feel from the sculpture. One day a man told me he saw love in the sculpture, but I don't know what love is." He was a man like her, who stayed to watch for a couple of hours. "You don't know love?" "I don't know. It's too complex for me, but the sculptures do touch others. Rather odd because when I sculpt it's just for myself. That it talks to others is a surprise." She hands Rich and me little sticks with some pink stuff on them. "Strawberry." Am I supposed to suck the candy off the bamboo? I try and break off the edible stick. Unlike the usual Dupont product, the Asian pink stuff actually tastes like strawberry, kind of like warm ice cream. It's amazing the number of different ways problems can be solved. "I have to go now. I hope we meet again before I go back to Taiwan." "So do I. I've enjoyed your questions." That's unusual. "I'll be back here in two weeks." She gives me a little bag of the candy sticks, this time chocolate, then walks away. I want to hollow out the sculpture's base, but even my foggy late afternoon brain realizes this is more dangerous than it's worth. The original slanting-top shell form that never was has become a steep ramp under the big upper space's lower outline. Around to the southwest I continue the slant under some other parts, cutting outlines and making the surfaces undulate. The basal hollow is just a fake behind a narrow cut that serves more to break up a broad surface. I am indeed in trouble with the tide. After slowly rising all afternoon waves are breaking almost in my back pocket. Rich starts building a seawall. He has the right idea and I take over after he's had enough, building it wider and longer, just in time to keep a big wave off the sculpture. I don't need this; the extra work is just too much. One wave wipes out five minutes' shovel work. "It needs more space, but I just don't have it within me." "I think you can get away with that central one, but the lower one is out." "Yah, Rich. Problem is, how do I get at the central one?" There's so much salt from the increasing wind on my glasses that, when I look into the space, it's just dark. And I'm supposed to dig around the corner? Well, just put the Steel Finger in there and feel it. "Use the Force, Larry." Or your fingertips, reaching around the outside to feel the space inside. The tent stake bores through, the Steel Finger widens and smooths the space. I'd hoped for catching some light, but it's shaded by a panel. "It looks to me like relationships and love." Well, I guess I've touched several people today. But for some clean-up the sculpture is complete. Keeping an eye on the seawall I trim here, polish there. The tide is finally beginning to recede. "It's 6:26. I think you're safe." "Yah, we shouldn't get anything bigger than what we've faced." I take down the ends of the wall so that the waves will smooth it out. When the clean-up is complete, or as complete as I can make it, I take down the rest of the wall--"Getting a little confident, aren't we?"--and then sign the sculpture. It's quite a piece. It has in common with other complex formed sculptures the cylindric outline that is nearly inevitable: start with a cylinder, carve many small parts and the overall shape is cylindric. In this case it doesn't matter very much because this cylinder contains flowing shapes and fascinating spaces. Some hard parts are big and strong, others are small and delicate. Little hollows set off particular points in elements that rise from base to top. It's better than the plan. Rich takes the kite down. He's leaving, chilled by the wind that is still strong this near sunset. I'm brainless. I guess I should shoot some photos. Passersby stop to chat but I'm inside a fogbank. Colin stands out, his eyes glittering in the low angle distilled light. The sun disappears in sheets of gold over the mountains, its Midas touch making a magical sculpture even more so. Where do these things come from? Call it another "Weightless" for the New Millenium, complexity with springiness. Call it a night, Larry. You're toast.

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