99F-12 "Polder Child"

Steve finally got around to developing my film of 99F-11. It looks pretty rough; he had to make two proof sheets because the range of exposures is so wide. "You had your mind on other things." He's right; the photography task has been taking the back seat lately. "We're having calzones for dinner. You want to come over?" "Sure. Sounds good to me." I shouldn't; tomorrow's sculpture doesn't require an early start, but still would benefit from getting to bed at a reasonable hour and as soon as I enter the Dean Zone strange things happen.

Build number:	99F-12 (lifetime start #168)
Title:	"Polder Child"
Date:	September 3
Location:	Venice Breakwater, south side
Start:	0800; building time: 10 hours
Height:	4.5 feet
Base:	1.75 feet (cylindric)
Photography:	one roll RA w/LX and 85mm

1. Approved Jewish Sand Sculptor Fuel While we're playing with Dean--building things with blocks, throwing balls, putting Dean through the basketball hoop, bouncing the Earth off Steve's head--my thoughts turn to food. As in, what the heck am I going to eat tomrrow? I let digital cameras and skateboards distract me from getting my my usual Force Primeval Bars from Trader Joe's and there's nothing in the refrigerator. A free-pile sculpture can fly on fumes, but big ones take everything and require regular replenishing. "How about bagels?" "Yes! Virginia, you're a genius." Noah's will be open when I head for the beach. Sand sculpture fuel has to be tough because you never know what might end up on top of it. Forget bananas. Doesn't matter how carefully you pack, the more fragile an item is the more likely it is to work its way beneath the camera. Larry and I differ on details: he likes deli sandwiches. I prefer to eat lighter things, making up for this when I get home. Larry will be proud of me for heading in the right direction. I divert from my usual route, parking the 10-foot-long beach outfit on the sidewalk. Noah's smells good. "what would you like?" "Two of these, and . . " "Will you be getting half a dozen?" "How many can I get for $4?" This is all the cash I have. "That'll get you half a dozen, with some change." I work my way south, trailer following along smoothly through cool damp air. 2. Harbinger The beach rakes have erased the overnight high-tide marks so I have to guess. Occasional big wave boom against the breakwater and I add a surf fudge factor and place the sculpture. Low tide is supposed to go to 2.5 feet, but waves regularly enter my borrow pits at three resulting in a strange dance just to dig. The sand is good, but toward the end the far-reaching waves have started dragging coarser sand down. Erosion, while I watch. Strangely, there are few surfers. The waves are well shaped, but perhaps too big for many. They're certainly too big for me when I essay my usual pile-completion celebratory body-surfing interlude. Strong currents, lots of sand in the water. I'm timid and wade back out, fighting the waves' pull. 3. Deviation from Plan For a long time I've been thinking about sculptures that curve inward from a bulging base, then spread outward at the very top. Today's the day to try. With the cake spatula I try to cut inward but the tool, so effective on free-piled and coarse sand, just bounces off of this pile. It's too flexible and not sharp enough. The Super Slicer, my take on the offset-handle idea but with a rigid blade, works much better. The finished profile looks good. From the top, this line curves inward, then outward and going through a point of inflection, curving down and back inward at the base. It's too simple. At the bottom, I cut steps, as of overlapping layers. To the left I cut the sand away, exposing the ends of the layers and making a space that should turn into a cut-through to somewhere. Closer to the top I cut more subtle lines, separating the long vertical leg into three sections. The very top is supposed to be light and delicate, but ends up being a complex surface whose soft curves take some surprising directions. Oh, well, if I wanted to make plans I'd be an architect. 4. Visitors "Hi, Rich." I'm struggling with the parafoil. Usually it just takes off, but today it's throwing a tantrum. The delta with its counterrotating tails is already up, floating on the gentle breeze that finally formed out of the morning's confused currents. "Hi, Larry." "How come mine never look like that?" There are many possible answers to that, but the question is fundamentally unanswerable. He's not me, and has other things he'd rather spend his time doing. "I'll be in a contest next month, with the office." "Oh, the architects' association one on Zuma Beach?" "Yes. Have you participated?" He's lively, long haired, enthusiastic. "No. The first year I heard about it they were in Santa Monica but I was too late. The next year they moved to Zuma, and the sand is terrible there. No way to make something like this." Or even what I did last week, with the coarser high-tide sand here. "It looks like wood. I sculpt in wood and other materials." "Yes, but sand doesn't require the chisels and hammers, and I can work in this studio." The rescue boat idles offshore; I hear its distinctive diesel but pay it no mind until the siren gets bumped a couple of times. "Hey, Larry! It looks great!" Even through the loud-hailer I can tell it's Simon. I wave back, then dance around so he can see me through the binos. This is neat; over the years I've managed to become part of something. "They still let the two of you out together?" "There's nothing they can do. It's in the contract, Larry." "Ah, Jim, if the folks on the beach only knew what you guys really do." "Sometimes we have to work. A couple of days ago we rescued an attempted suicide. Teenage girl." "You know she was trying to kill herself?" "Slashed wrists are a good hint. We had to treat that, then get the water out of her lungs. She was found by a family swimming at 10. At night." "I'll quit teasing you. You earn your pay on events like that." "Oh, oh. Here it comes, Larry. This one has your name on it." A wall of green lifts, and then becomes even higher. 5. Dutch Boy Waves are sometimes sneaky, but this one advertises with a growing hiss. Before I can move I'm sitting in the ocean, my tool tub is floating away and water is sluicing around the sculpture. "Where'd that come from?" "Who knows. I have new insoles." "Oh, boy, Rich. You know better than to provide that sort of invitation to the surf." No matter; there's work to be done. I pick up the shovel and start adding to the seawall that Rich built, making it taller and wrapping around up the beach to protect from sideswipes as waves bounce off the storm drain. In Holland they use mats and rocks to reinforce their dikes. I look around the beach and see riprap instead of seaweed. This must look very funny as I walk along with armloads of brown slithery fronds. After dumping these onto the wall I cover them with sand. The last time we were in straits this desperate we lost the sculpture. The sand in the wall eroded faster than we could replace it. The first time the reinforced wall gets hit I see the value of the seaweed because there's something left after the water has receded. "Would you like some help shoveling?" "Yes! Please!" Not only am I already tired, but I'm losing time. It needs to be rescued from the wild surf, but it also needs a lot more carving. Dave, from New Zealand, works contantly on the wall and keeps it ahead of the water. Rich carries buckets of dry sand to dump on also. I carve more seriously now; there's more than just my art at stake. Waves come in widely separated sets. When they arrive they're huge, towering over the surfers. One is big enough as it breaks for a surfer to ride inside the tube. Five or six of them come together, a moving mountain of water that just keeps driving higher. On a trip for more seaweed, I turn around and see the whole polder full of water around the sculpture. This is bad. I race back, dig a drain before the base softens enough to split the heavy sculpture. "Theoretically, the high tide is past." "Thanks, Rich. Would you please go tell Neptune?" Actually, the dynamics of the breakwater saved us from the worse; waves hit the rocks, wrapped around and the northern component got over before the southern, thereby deflecting the northbound water and sending it sideways just south of the seawall. At last the moon has its way and the big waves' reach is grudgingly reduced. They still boom against the breakwater and hit the seawall, but they don't come over. Very much anyway. I don't want to be overconfident but I think both the sculpture and Rich's new insoles are safe. 6. Carving The top has become much heavier than intended, so its other parts will have to match the shapes and support the sand. Usually this takes the form of legs, but I want something different. Related to the "pods" that showed up a few months ago, the top of this piece becomes a set of interlocking pieces with rounded ends, rather like bones but more curved. Call it full round sculpture with bas-relief embellishments. All of this takes time. To look good, as if they belong, the hollows, undulations and divisions have to be shaped carefully. A smooth simple panel can be made in minutes, but the stack of overlapping ends at the sculpture's base take half an hour to finish. Even then, from certain angles I see more problems that have to be worked out. The finished part is worth the effort, but to do a whole sculpture like this would take days. I'm glad the contrast between smooth panels and detailed areas looks so good. Where the basal overlaps end against the long curve from above there's room for a space. What I lack is time for considering the engineering of how to connect to something on the far side, so I content myself to connect it upward with the big space under the top, and a smaller space behind the western leg. While working on this south side my back is splashed by waves hitting the seawall. 7. Advanced Mass Hiding The north side of the top is a problem. It's heading toward a default leg, which I've done before. This has never looked good, so I try something radical and undercut, removing the back of the leg. Now the top section continues the bone look from the west side, as if it's an assembly set on top of the rest. Farther down I have another problem. Time forces an imperfect answer, a subtle edge definition and some hollowing that make this major leg look like part of the design. Almost. More separation and smoothing make it look OK. It still needs something, but I see no place for the wholesale removal required for a space, so I just chop off its lower end and tuck it in behind an extension from the west leg. This gives room to cut a space through behind the west leg and breaks up a too-big expanse of sand. Of such subtle tricks is sculpture made. Farther around the base to the east is the logical outlet for a space but time precludes this. The sun is racing into building clouds low in the sky. Here the decorations are simpler, a triple-point meeting of curves, a subtle in-and-out move of a panel that extends from the north leg. 8. The Finish "That's it, folks. Time for clean-up." "It's five-fifteen." "So, it'll be ten hours." Actually it takes nearly another full hour before the sculpture's many elements are polished enough to call finished. The stacked panels on the south required much rework and polishing, and then I decided to continue their separations into the western space. Much rubbing is required here and there to remove construction marks and make curves look continuous. I'm afraid to rub the top very hard because so much of it is hanging out there so it stays a little rough. Deep inside the major hollow under the top I remove more sand, shaping this interior space so the parts more or less fit. Everything done in one place affects the appearance of another place, so that place has to be reworked also. Finally, it's good enough. I'm long past the place where I could finish every sculpture element perfectly, so I've downgraded finish quality in favor of complexity. It's an interesting balance. Nearly two hours after high tide waves are still hitting the seawall so it has to stay. I clean up the rest of the foundation, find some loose sand to make the signature pad, sign it and keel over. Bystanders break into applause, either for the sculpture or for the histrionics. 9. Complete One man walks around, crouching to look upward. A woman tells me she always enjoys seeing my sculptures. A jogger pauses to look it over, giving me a thumbs-up. I work my way around, photographing. "The light's always changing!" Why are you complaining, Rich? You're camera's automatic. Clouds form and dissolve, borne on the damp cool wind. The kites, all three, still float up there. The light goes from soft gold to glowing cement and back, with all the intermediate variations. It's quite a piece. Walking around it leads to surprises, sudden transition from smooth to corrugated or soft undulation, ending at a sharp edge someplace. Yes, it could use more work, but I'm just one sand sculptor on a shortening late-summer day. In the blowing dark, a dimmed red sun approaching Malibu, three people approach. Rich has left to meet Lorna, but is this her? With her wood-sculptor cousin? Yes, it is. This is a rare treat. The light is gone. I drag the trailer off the beach, intercepted by one more enthusiastic passerby. I'm just too gone to notice much of anything. I'll have to wait for photographs.

10. The Future Grey clouds float low over ever-moving water that shimmers under a sun made dim by vapor. It's a dull red when seen directly, but by the time its light reaches the beach it has been robbed of almost all color. I shoot a last round of photos with this very soft light that reaches every hollow of the sculpture. As I walk around, I wonder. What would happen if I made a sculpture entirely of pieces like the vaguely bone-like top? I could perhaps stack them, with spaces between bulging ends. It might be interesting, it might look too much like the Michelin tire man. Well, there's only one way to find out.

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 September 4, 5 HTML conversion October 2

99f12rpt.htm 99 July 11