99H-1

It's hard to keep from reading omens in the passing of pigeons and synchronization of signals. It takes one hand to keep the new camcorder from bumping my leg, leaving one hand to guide the unwieldy load. Fortunately the best omen is that there's no traffic. The air is damp and calm, with sunlight working its way through low mist.

Build number:	99H-1 (lifetime start #152)
Date:	January 1
Location:	Venice Breakwater, on the flat
Start:	1000; building time approx 5 hours
Height:	3.5 feet
Base:	1.6 feet (cylindric)
Photography:	one roll TMX135 w/LX and 85mm; approx 55 min. video w/XL1

The camcorder is new. Ever since using Fred's in 1989, I've been thinking of buying one. I never could justify it, but the itch stayed. When a local camera store offered a deal on a good one, I got tired of resisting. When I buy something it's for a specific purpose, but not this time; I set out on this path without any idea of the destination. Right now I'll settle for getting to the beach without crashing this wiggly load. Tides come and go in accordance with the dance of planets. Today there's a triple line-up: we're as close to the sun as we get, the moon is as far north as it goes and it's full. All of these combine to pull the ocean a foot and a half above the average high tide, and the practical result for me is a late start and problematic sand availability. The high tide drags the upper beach coarse sand back down, on top of the finer lower beach sand. It is beautiful. Waves hammer the breakwater, sending sparkling spray over the angular black rocks. The surf isn't big, but it's well-formed and surfers are getting good rides. Building a base is easy. Just throw some sand on the beach, let a wave wash over it, then stomp. That's as far as I can go; I just can't bear to use this coarse sand for a sculpture. Wading out thigh-deep into the moving water lets me sample, sort of like an oil prospector drilling and hoping. In this case the hope is justified. All I have to do is wait. What a contrast this is to the usual. I get to sit on the sand and watch the water patterns. A stilt feeds, dexterously and quickly probing the sand with its long beak. Gradually the water falls away. Behind me preparations are going forward for the annual Penguin Swim. They have a good day for it; the sun is warming my back and evaporating the mist. Their idea of fun is to leap into the 54-degree water and tell everyone how much they enjoyed it. I'm tempted to join them. It does look like fun. Itchy to start, I try digging higher on the beach where I have to remove six inches of overburden. This doesn't go well; as soon as I get the better sand revealed, a wave fills the borrow pit and I have to start over. With much work I manage to get two buckets of sand so I start filling the form. This is a short day. The Penguins are about to go. I get the video camera and amble over. They yell to encourage each other and the lifeguard gives the signal. The first heat dashes down the beach, hits the water and shrieks erupt. They keep on going, through the surf, around the bouy and back. With much back-slapping they congratulate each other, probably because it's over for another year. When I return to work, the tide is well out. The beach slopes more gradually down there, so a little drop reveals a lot of sand. What it reveals is good; I skim the best from the surface and resume piling. Rich shows up and helps with the carrying. After that, it's easy and by 1300 the pile is ready with two buckets worth of sand built into a free-pile extension a little over a foot tall. Rich, the Offical Timekeeper, says it's 1300. With sunset around 1645, there's no time for contemplation. I just have to move sand. With brave strokes I trim the extension's west face and continue the curve down into the main pile. That suggests a few other things, so I carve it on down to the bottom and cut deeply behind. To hold the tower up I carve a big concave panel whose curve is a long sweep from bottom to a projecting top. To unite this with the tower, I hollow out behind and continue the curve into the tower's lower section. Lorna and Anna come walking up, bundled to their eyebrows. Well, it is chilly out here, with a damp breeze working off the ocean and the sun running west. I'm too busy to eat, so they offer me nuts and other small things I don't have to pick up with sandy hands. The begging puppy routine alarms some bystanders, but forget 'em if they can't take a joke. There are lots of bystanders. They amble around, sit on blankets, play in the sand. One family comes up to talk to me and each child asks me how I did it. When one says she could never do anything like this, I tell her everyone starts someplace. Then I demonstrate, down in the wet zone, how to make free-pile sculpture. This captivates them for a couple of hours, after which she comes back and tells me her sculpture doesn't look as good as mine. I tell her of course not; she's been doing it for an hour or two and I've been doing it for years. We walk back to the sculpture she worked on with her brother and sister. Like most others working in sand, she hasn't realized that a pile of sand has an inside as well as an outside. I point this out, then start digging. The boy takes over. My sculpture's only hole is in a place different from that planned. Originally I'd wanted to make a big space behind the original leg, but there was no place on the other side for it to come out because I wanted to leave the big concave panel alone. So, the hole goes east instead of north. What's more interesting is that the sculpture doesn't really need a hole at all. It has good element separation anyway, with edges defined and curves meeting in interesting ways. This is a first. Is there an end to my usual no-holes-barred style in sight? Time is up. Finish is scanted, and the whole sculpture could use more work, but it's a good one. Also, it's still here which is better than I managed last year. Anna has been offering encouragement for conservatism all day. She was here for the 1998 edition and watched as it collapsed. We keep telling her the sand is better this year but she's not buying it and keeps asking me if I really want to cut that sand away. Maybe she's like the guy who came by earlier and said that the pile was perfect as is and didn't need carving. Then he looked at the pictures and didn't say much more. I call it a wrap and sign it. It's short but strong. The time restriction reduced detail, making each element larger, but they fit together very well. Brancusi was interested in reducing forms to the simplest possible, but I feel complexity is part of life. I've always liked to tell the whole story. A skeleton doesn't make a complete creature. In this case, time precluded anything but essential elements but they still reflect my interest in complexity in the way they meet and twist. As the light fades I trade cameras back and forth. The video is an experiment; I have no idea what really works in presenting a still three-dimensional object in a moving medium so I try various techniques. The camcorder's excellent image stabilizer keeps the image from jittering too much as my tired hands guide it. Rich has handled the color photography well, so I'm shooting black-and-white in 35mm, another experiment. As the light changes under clouds with the moving earth the sculpture generates interesting shadows, inviting detail photography. The sun falls below the mist layer. It's time to go. I load up, check the area for small things such as lens caps, and we push off. Shouting erupts in the distance, but doesn't get my attention until my overloaded brain finally parses the phrase into "Launch! Launch!" It's Rocket and Andi, running lightly over the packed sand. I park the bike and we stand around talking, becoming even colder. This calls for tom kah kai. We adjourn to one of the local Thai restaurants and warm ourselves inside and out, Lorna, Anna, Rich and I. Puns and good food and a sculpture that held together. These are good omens for the year.

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