Monday "Hello, lump." "Good morning." "Ready to go to the beach?" "Just about." He had punched holes through the sign, enabling him to lash it to small wooden posts. The entire assembly had been securely mounted onto the bike trailer. It would be suspended about two feet above the beach, nearby any sculptures and easily seen by anyone who would look at it. It looked good. [ed. note: the sign doesn't show up in the images because it wasn't attached until two days later.] We got to the beach by eleven. Rich was there. With the Canon XL-1, I shot two passes of Larry riding by us with the trailer. Spider-Man goes high-tech.

I had my lunch and put on lotion while Larry began deploying the kites. The launching process looked good so I got a few shots of Larry deploying the box kite - one of three in the armada. They were good shots, with Larry's body leaning into the wind as he let the string out, the brightly-colored unlikely rectangular contraption struggling upward in the steady breeze. The Child was having fun. "We did forms yesterday," I said. "Let's do freepiling today." "Okay." He dug a hole in the firm sand, some yards away from the water. It was maybe a foot deep. We poured buckets of water in. Larry reached down with both hands and came up, backhoe fashion, with a huge glob of material and plopped it on the beach. He slapped it a bunch of times with the palms of his hands, sending droplets of muddy water spraying everywhere. Then he reached down into the hole and came up with another double handful and plopped it down next to the first. The material from the second scoop flowed almost seamlessly into the first, so that it was impossible to tell them apart. Another scoop. And another. I sat down beside him and began building my own pile. I'd done free piling maybe twice before and never with this technique. My double handfuls were smaller and tended to look like sand burger-patties that could easily be distinguished from one another. "You're not moving fast enough," Larry said, coming over to help. "And you're losing too much water." "That's not all of it," I said. "But I can't put my finger on what it is. Do a few handfuls over here while I watch." He did. When building the pile, Larry ceases to be a human being and becomes a sand piling machine. It was as though the flesh and bone departed, leaving in its place a thing that just piled sand, double handful after double handful, rapid-fire, never tiring. It was maybe a second or less from the time his hands left the hole until the time they landed on top of the growing pile. Human hands aren't designed to move liquid efficiently, but I noticed that he moved seemingly impossible amounts of material with each transfer, even taking his large hands into account. I sat down beside him and began building my side of the pile in concert with him. "Faster." I watched. One second to move from hole to top of pile. That was a longer time interval then he'd been doing, only because the pile was now large and the top of the pile was now further up, away from the hole. An enormous double handful of material that was more muddy water than it was wet sand went on top. One hand held vertically, fingers together, to keep the material from running off the top. The other hand slapped the material on top, dissipating the watery sheam into flying droplets landing on my face, arms, shoulders. As he slapped, the watery mixture flowed smoothly between the fingers of the vertical hand onto the area below. "If you're not getting messy, you're not doing it right," he said. "Okay," I said. I resumed the piling on my side. My handfuls were smaller, though I tried several things to get more material up, including using part of my wrists and forearms as the scoop, along with my hands when I did the upswing. Most of my handfuls still had the wet pancake look. I got about one out of every six tries right. I knew they were right by the way the material flowed when it landed and by the sheam that remained for a few seconds while the water drained. "That's it. Good. Now faster. Don't let up." I watched him. Another handful down. Slapped. Into the hole. Another handful. Slapped, into the hole. No more than a second passing from leaving the hole to the landing on top of the pile. Only about five to ten seconds passing between scoopings. When the water drained out of the hole, we'd fill the buckets with water from the Pacific and refill the hole. "Because we've let some time elapse, the sand has had time to dry out, which is not what you want. The new layer won't adhere to the previous layer well. Therefore, the first number of scoops after you refill the hole with water have to be especially watery, so that the new sand will adhere to the old sand." "Okay," I said. We kept working. I was short of breath and my back hurt. I had to take frequent rests. Larry kept going. "You have pretty damn good stamina for anyone," I told him, "Let alone for a guy of 47." "Experience," he said. "Now once it gets up around this high," he indicated with his hand about two feet high, "the water drains out faster and it takes longer to move the sand from the hole to the top of the tower, which is why most of my free piled sculptures tend to default to oblong bases with towers going up at one end - too much energy and speed required to build them up symmetrically past a certain point." "Especially knowing how big a fan you are of symmetry," I said. He smiled at that one. "Why not just work out of the bucket, moving the bucket close to where you want to work," said Rich. "Already tried that. The sand simply sticks to the inside of the bucket. Too hard to get it out fast, when you need it." "Oh."

Finally, we had both piles completed. We'd both worked on each. I wasn't sure I'd helped him; I was still getting the technique down and my wet sand scoops were questionable. Well, we'd just have to deal with it. "Break out dem carving tools!" I said.

It was late when we were through. At over three feet, mine was the largest free piler I'd ever done. I went for a three-way hybrid, incorporating elements of castles, abstracts, and 'message sculptures' that Sandy Feet sometimes does. The top was a double cone shape, with a zigzag undercut all the way around, accomplished with the Sons Of The Beach 'big square tool'. The tower went down a ways, and I'd gotten a chance to test the column tool. Not bad. About a quarter of the way down the castle design broke up crazily, with a small hole punched through to the other side. Below that was a broad tablet, approximately flat, on which I'd carved "HI TALYA & MAYAAN" in large print. The "&" symbol was the simpler one used in note taking, that doesn't appear on a keyboard. The other side had a small house with slanted roof embedded in the side, along with several flowing curves arcing from one side to the other. About fifteen percent of the pile was barely worked on at all. The edge of the word tablet was something I'd wanted to make sharp, crisp and even, as though it were an impressive facade, but the sand, daylight and my talent didn't permit what I wanted. The piece was unpolished, and not unified. But it had a nice message I could show my nieces. Ali, their mom and my sister, would probably like it. It also had given me a chance to test out the Sons Of The Beach tools, which I'd wanted to do. Overall it had a playful, good-time look that I liked a lot. Larry's sculpture was from another planet where rough surfaces and jagged edges had been banned - a Nelson sculpture in full glory. Gone was any trace of the mud ploppings from earlier in the day. What remained of the top tower was a curving thin slab of sand whose crisp, sharp planes neatly bridged the space between two holes - one triangular, the other roughly oblong. The entire top assembly was undercut as though a bald-headed creature were wearing a bizarre party hat. The party hat would have been conical shaped, except for the open space created by the holes. The lower part of the sculpture looked like an armchair with two enormous armrests, puffed up so large that there was no room for the center cushion. A large, round, perfectly-formed sandball rested between the two 'armrests'. Graceful curves merged seamlessly into other graceful curves, meeting broad sloping planes with crisp edges.

I smiled as I walked over and commented. "That's so nice!" I said. This was the first 'Free Pile lesson' day.

Return to 99P-13 Report.

Top of Page Library Human Touch Museum 1999 Sculptures 1998 1997 1996 1995 All contents copyright 1999 by Larry Dudock cerebi@aol.com Written Friday, September 24, 1999 HTML conversion October 8 (by Larry Nelson)

99p13rpt.htm 99 October 8