99F-14 "Presentation"

"Larry." "Hi, Larry. Long time, no hear." "Hi, Kasey. What's going on?" "Oh, I just wanted to hear a friendly voice. How has your day been?" "In the four hours since your last call, I've done some skateboarding and kite flying. Not a whole lot of energy, lots of sculpturing, not much sleep." "You need a nap." "I'm hearing this from the queen of confusion of day and night?" "Well, I am a nurse, I know how to prescribe." "Ah, I'll just go to bed early. Larry's coming up tomorrow. Have to call him tonight and find out what he wants to do. Saturday's a major sculpture." "Ummm. Aren't you forgetting something?" "Oh, damn. The birthday party. You know, my mind's been tickly all this week. Thanks for reminding me. Lilibeth would kill me." "Only if I didn't get to you first." "I know I can count on you for support."

Build number:	99F-14
Title:	"Presentation"
Date:	September 17
Location:	Venice Beach
Start:	0745; building time: 10 hours (see text)
Height:	4.5 feet
Base:	1.75 feet, cylindric
Photography:	one roll RA135-24 w/LX and 85mm

The phone just rings. Repeated tries bring identical results. They sort of expect me to have a brain on board when I'm at work so Sunday isn't the best day for a major sculpture. Besides, the tide isn't very good. It'll have to be tomorrow, and Larry will have to take pot luck. He'd expressed interest in watching me carve through a whole pile of sand so a full-scale sculpture is one possibility. Another is for him to reprise Wednesday's sculpture, changing a few elements to see what effect the changes have, with perhaps more direct suggestions from me. When in doubt, when there's a choice, do what you need to do rather than wait for someone else. I need to make a sculpture. I'm gone by 7:30, with a note on the door for Larry. The construction people are already at work on the storm drain, but the only effect is the rearrangement of lots of sand. They move it this way, they move it that way. They've certainly messed up my sculpture sand, so I go on south. One of Wednesday's sculptures is still standing. The people have spoken: it's Larry's, but passersby have added religious comments and seagulls have perched on the top. Amazing. Still here after two days. Mine is only a stump. I set up ten feet below it and start piling. I have to fight the surf for every bucketful of sand. The tide is down only to about three feet and will turn soon so I work like a demon, carrying, filtering, packing. The effort is successful. I steal the last two buckets as waves regularly fill the borrow pit. There are thousands of tiny clams in the upper three inches of sand. I filter a pound or so of them out with each addition to the pile, and the midden is large by the time I'm finished. The poor things never deserved this so I scoop them into a bucket and carry them down the beach. Larry'd really get a laugh out of this; he already thinks I'm nuts for carrying it up. "Where'd all the little clams come from, Jim?" "They're here at times." "Well, I had to filter zillions of them out." "Is that so. May I see your fishing license, sir?" His buddy Dave chimes in with "And you know they have to be four inches. You're in real trouble." I guess I won't tell them about the crab I caught. "Doesn't it matter that I threw them all back?" I really should have clammed up on the whole issue. Finally they let me off with just a warning and laugh their way down the beach, preparing to clean the headquarters for the brass. With the pile complete I can take a break. Larry's sculpture gets a good spraying. It also needs some repairs; I polish out the scratchings and rework the top to smooth out the seagull footprints. This causes problems because the sand is dry under a damp layer and comes off in chunks. A good spraying solves that but leaves the divots. I fix those with some delicate sculpting, then rework a few other damaged areas. Larry will probably be upset, but it's better this way than damaged. For the main event I have an idea derived from Wednesday's short sculpture. I liked the arch-over-arch structure, so plan in my mind a more complex version of that and start cutting. To me, it's simply sand sculpture. Temporary, fragile, personal, done in one fierce burst and then done. To others it's a metaphor, a lively spiritual expression found by chance. To me, the real sculpture is still inside; the sandy one is an approximate result limited by lack of skill and sand's inherent characteristics. Still, the skills are good enough, and sand's characteristics flexible enough, to enable my expression. What other material can be worked directly by fingers? What other material can be so subtle? Michon understands. A musician who has seen my sculptures on other beach walks, he finally sees one being made. "Thank you for the inspiration. But how do you feel about leaving it here to be wiped out by the tide?" "Well, it lasts longer than a musical performance." This stops his animated movement for a few moments, and he smiles. Vestiges of his salesman past show in how he presents himself, the directness of his speech, but to that he has added a trait rare in salesmen: listening. Occasionally. "How do you do this?" "It requires well-packed sand. I've developed the equipment, but you don't have to have all this. I can show you how to do sand sculpture with just your hands." Build number: 99P-14 Title: "Song for Michon" Building time: 15 minutes Photography: none, no time "You dig a hole so water seeps in. Then you dig out handfuls, plop them on the beach and pat them until the water is gone. Quickly you add more until the pile is finished." He adds a few handfuls. Like most people on the beach he shrinks from the flying sand produced while patting. "Yah, you get dirty doing this. All over your face." The pile grows quickly, with coarse sand. "Then you can carve it." He picks up a shell fragment and scratches. "That's the idea. Or you can use fingers." I demonstrate, digging in and downward in a graceful curve. "The advantage of this is the pile can be something other than a cylinder. The disadvantage is that it's not so well packed. Tradeoffs." I smooth the north side, which extends beyond the main pile. "You can also use the beach." I dig under the projection, making a slanting leg over a tunnel. "That's the way it works." A wave comes in, flows through the tunnel and the leg fails. The little sculpture gracefully falls over. I walk back over to the main sculpture and start spraying. Even with the thick overcast there's enough infrared to dry the sand. Michon bids good-bye and wanders off across the beach. Default sculptural moves come from body mechanics. It's easier to move a tool this way than that way, and easier to start at this height than to lean over and make the cut lower. Resistance takes conscious effort. This, instead of that. Here, not there, and make it go this way. Against gravity, against the natural swing of an arm and hand and tool. The top takes a slight drop to the east. It's supposed to be matched by another part on the north that slants the other way, but the casual cut that starts this second part suggests something else and the plan goes out the window. With a loop here and a sharp curve someplace else to balance it the sculpture is the product of a graduate from the Dr. Seuss School of Architecture. He has always been one of my favorite teachers. At least the top half is. What with kite hassles due to the fitful wind, distractions provided by Jim and Dave cutting their usual antics in the big lifeguard truck and Larry essaying another free-piler with my technical assistance, the day slips away rapidly. As I help him the whole thing seems very funny. Who'd think that piling sand could require anything beyond the obvious? As I watch him, then offer advice, the strangeness is still there. It depends on what you want to do with the pile of sand. In this case fractions of seconds matter. In a tenth of a second enough water runs out of the handful of sand he's transferring that it doesn't flow and consolidate well when it arrives. This makes problems for the next load. "I know it seems odd, but the only difference between what the two of us do is speed. You need to be quick, especially with this marginal sand." He speeds up and there's an immediate improvement in his delivery of sand. The resulting pile is nearly three feet tall and reasonably solid. He picks up a couple of tools and goes to work. Fortunately I have back-ups for the ones he's using. I guess I'll keep the old Steel Finger rather than give it away. Never can tell when another sand sculptor will come to visit. What am I going to do here? There's a whole lot of sand to carve but no time for it. "Well, Rich, I guess it'll be a sculpture on top of a decorated base. I think the top is good enough for me to get away with it." "Yes. I'll let you go. This time. It's a great top, but don't expect such largesse all the time." "Thank you. I won't. I promise. At least until next time." I cut another hole, define around it, but chicken out of punching through to the obvious exit. "I like the top enough that I don't want to overextend the sand." Maybe it's the distractions, but I'm not getting much feeling from this one. Passersby are more impressed; more of them say "Thank you" than usual. Maybe it's that I'm thinking of other recent sculptures that were so nicely integrated. This one's a good start, with its arch through a rib and curlicues but doesn't quite jell. It's a throwback to last year's complicated technical pieces with lots of parts that never became sculptural. Well, call it a good half of a sculpture. I clean it up as best I can; with all the flying sand pieces on top getting inside with any delicacy is impossible. The only sign of sunset is a general diminution of light from beyond thick cloud. What breeze there was, barely enough to support a kite, eased to the occasional gentle puff hours ago. Three sculptures stand on the beach. Good enough. I work north, barely able to see through salt-covered glasses.

Top of Page Library Human Touch Museum 1999 Sculptures 1998 1997 1996 1995 All contents copyright 1999 by Larry Nelson lord_chaos@compuserve.com -except- Final photograph copyright 1999 by Larry Dudock cerebi@aol.com Written 99 September 18, 19 HTML conversion October 11

99f14rpt.htm 99 October 11