00F-2    "If I'd Had One . . ."

Build number:	00F-2 (lifetime start #186)
Title:	"If I'd Had One . . ."
Date:	January 15
Location:	Venice Breakwater, south side
Start:	0800; building time: 8 hours
Height:	4.3 feet
Base:	1.75 feet, cylindric
Photography:	2 TMX120 w/67II and 165; double video walkaround w/XL1

Rich is going to kill me. I tried to tell him, but got only ringing. No FARley, no human beings. And I'm not about to call before the scheduled 0730 departure time. 1. Prelude This was supposed to be a motorcycle ride, but I ran out of energy and tolerance. Spitting nails at traffic, I rode home Wednesday and was fortunate to arrive in one piece. It's time for a break. Stop. Do nothing. Discipline switch locked OFF. Five days. One of the early acts is a skateboard ride. First stop is the Breakwater, where the long fence has been moved to the other side of the bike path. I wonder if anyone feels any embarrassment over two days of work thrown away like that. I should be doing a sculpture right now. A thick layer of great sand invites, lack of energy cancels. Tomorrow probably won't work, but Saturday... 2. Entering the Track "Larry, Bonnie Louie wants to see one of your sculptures. Are you doing one this weekend?" "Hmmm. I was thinking of doing one tomorrow, Don. Give her the particulars. Remember: north of the Venice Pier." "The same place?" "Yes." He brought his family out some years ago. "Hi, Larry. This is Bonnie Louie. Don's friend?" "Yes, he's talked about you." "Are you planning a sculpture tomorrow?" 3. Guidance On-line Good sand... plenty of time due to an early start... promise of rain... and a pretty strong itch. "Yes. Start time 8 o'clock." "I won't be able to come that early, but maybe around 2 in the afternoon. If my friend wants to come." "All right. I'll be there." 4. Launch Let's see. I'll need the sand-proof camera to do safety shots in Rich's absence. Big camera, food, water. Raincoat in case the storm Steve predicts shows up early. Video camera? Gamble, put it in a waterproof bag, bungee it to the trailer. All right, let's get out of here. We're burnin' daylight, which started with glorious reds and oranges painted to the horizon on graceful grey clouds. 5. Sand Sculpture Base The beach has eroded more, but there's good sand available for cream-skimming. With the coming tide topping out at 3.2 feet I can work close to the water. The equipment comes off the trailer and I go to work. Over the New Year weekend, doing two sculptures, people picked up about 30 copies of the 12-page info sheet. This is prohibitively expensive, so I made a condensed version that fits on two sides of a single sheet. They can take all they want of those out of their pocket on the trailer, and anyone who asks for details can have the full version. Yeow, this stuff is heavy. This aspect of the job may become easier in a while; I ordered some big high-flotation wheels in order to build a cart for toting sand. When I discover better sand about 200 feet away below some boulders, I realize the cart will allow me to build just about anywhere and import sand. If it works. It's a good pile, especially the top foot made with the sand below the rocks. Bulges in a couple of places testify to splits in the form. It's finally wearing out. 6. Carving 1 This being the weekend's only planned sculpture, I'm going to throw everything I have into it. The top is conceived as three small loops resting against each other. I hope to spread the design out gracefully to the ground. As frequently happens, there's a major miscommunication between sand and hands. The simple loop image disappears into a three-dimensional twisting arrangement of delicate but strong curves. 7. Contact 1 His voice is so quiet I can barely hear him over the sea's rush and recede. He talks of design and the beach, then wanders off toward home. An idea hits. Having not met anyone with a cellular phone, I run back to him and ask if he'll call Rich. "What's this about anonymous phone calls?" "Hi, Rich. I'm glad the message got through. I called last night, but neither FARley nor humans would answer." 8. Carving 2 One loop faces west. Against it leans a surface that would have been a north-facing loop but stays solid because I can't figure out how to cut the opening. Instead, I open the area below it. On the south is a broad panel. Its eastern edge gets rounded and separated, curving inward about two-thirds of the way down the pile. Between this and the solid piece above is a panel of sand several inches wide. I cut a series of holes into it, ending up with what to Rich looks like vines. 9. Contact 2 "Is that Sal?" I look around. "Behind you." Sure enough. "Hi, Sal!" We haven't seen him in over a year. Nor Terry. They used to meet on the beach every Saturday. "Hi, guys. How's it going?" "OK. It's nice to see you again. Have you heard anything about Terry?" "Yes. I talk to him regularly. They amputated two of his toes. Took one and thought it was OK, but he was on the beach and had a problem so lost the other. Now the doctor says he should stay away from here." "That's too bad." Our little community has lost a member. "How have you been?" "All right. Up and down, as usual." And cryptic, as usual. He walks off. 10 Carving 3 The "vine" area just doesn't work. Holes in the sand. So I go to work with the little offset cutter and work some details in. Now each solid part flows upward and the design is stronger. One problem solved, a few dozen more to go. It's turning into a complex sculpture, which feels good. I like hanging out on the edge like this, hoping it stays together, hoping the design guide in my head manages to turn all of these loose parts into a sculpture. One big boring curved panel gets some detail, otherwise known as non-structural sculpture elements. Its whole appearance is changed, now flowing upward to union with the top loop. Well done, design guide. 11. Weather "Maybe that storm really will arrive." "Yah, Rich." I feel some urgency. It's getting darker, thick clouds gradually flowing in from the north. It has been a day for lovely clouds: by turns lacy, fluffy, delicate shades of grey, silver white to bright to look at, puffs spread in a sheet over atmosphere so clear every detail of the mountains stands out. Now the air is thicker. The mountains fade into vapor. Nothing moves very fast; the sailboat races have probably lacked excitement. 12. Carving 4: cleanup "Well, Rich, I can't think of anyplace else to put a hole." "Surely not." Well, actually I can, but I don't want to. I like the sculpture, confusion and all. "It hangs together pretty well. At least better than I thought it would a couple of hours ago." He's right. This one is a testament to the power of the non-structural design elements. Cleaning it up is a problem. I'm short on energy and time. In one last silly-season move I carve a little hollow to put a ball in. The ball was supposed to go on top but ended up much too big for that. Finally I finish the base and sign it. What a silly piece. I like it a lot. 13. Photography This is what a tripod is for. I have little brain, but can read the unambiguous readouts of exposure and level. Make sure the sculpture's base touches the viewfinder bottom and top to top. The light is very flat, making exposure no problem. The tripod is required by the 1/8th second shutter speed. This goes to half a second by the time I'm finished. Then I do the video walkaround. Shaky video is better than no video. I walk around it twice because this gives a chance to look again at a part that is interesting. 14. Day is Done That's it. There's very little light, and I'm just plain done in. But I like it. This has been a fun day, a real delight. The spirit of surprise lives strongly in this piece. Warm in memory, I ride away north. 15. Afterword: January 16 Why write reports? More than as the scaffold of a Web page, the reports help me remember which sculpture is which. The unreported ones feel a little lonely. Technical Notes: The images accompanying this report were captured from digital video. I know the quality isn't that great, but it's far better than I expected and good enough for this cataloging purpose. Why use a low-quality format such as video? It saves me a lot of time. I don't have to shoot 35mm at all, and I don't have to scan the negatives. Shooting video gives me many more options: copy the tape and send it to people, edit it into a cohesive compilation, capture frames and use them on the Web. Think of it as a digital camera that shoots 30 720X480 frames per second and saves them to tape. Instead of the two hours required for image eding from 35mm, I can do a suite of six images in about half an hour. Enough said. Anyone who doesn't like it can volunteer to do the scanning. Any takers? <g> I'd rather do sand sculpture. For the technically oriented: The video camera is a Canon XL1. To get the images into my Power Computing Mac clone I have a Sony DVBK-2000 capture card. The card and its software work very well. I control the playback with the software. When I see a good frame, I pause and capture. The software includes a Photoshop plug-in to read the files; I import them and adapt them to the Web. It's quite direct and simple. The camcorder will shoot stills. I plan to experiment with this to see if I can improve the quality of the final image.

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