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94F-1June 19 | ||||
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After a seven-year hiatus I was back on the beach. Various things kept me away: sewage spills, putting energy into other things such as hiking and motorcycling. What prompted the return? A camera. Or a story. Maybe a forum on Compuserve; take your pick. Steve was the proximate cause. After years of being a utility motorcyclist, in the spring of 1992 I bought a different kind of motorcycle. Rather than specializing in power or quick handling or touring comfort, it managed an elegant balance of all these. I rode a lot, discovering wonder out there beyond the traffic signals. One day, I searched Compuserve for like-minded people and found the Motorcycling Forum. Something about riding gets people to write and others to read; I read their stories and started contributing my own. Having a supportive audience is very encouraging. How do you describe a flower, and differentiate it from all the other flowers? Saying "It's beautiful" doesn't give a reader much to go on. Having some excess money, I remembered an old dream: medium-format photography. Buy the camera, take it on rides, bring back views to put with stories. It was a great plan. The first thing I learned was that once you move out of 35mm photography, you move out of the inexpensive mini-labs and into the professional world. Well, expense I can handle. I liked the camera a lot. The lab had been there for years but I'd overlooked it. Now that I needed a photo lab, it dropped into my lap: right on the corner, 200 feet from where I live. Somewhat hesitantly, I approached this temple of high-performance photography and offered up my negative. The print knocked my socks off. So, this is how people get those terrific images, wherein the colors sparkle and everything is sharp! Naturally, I brought in more negatives. Just as naturally, Steve being the natural ham that he is, we started talking. Philosophy, photography, film and development, exposure and light. Eventually, talk turned to sand sculpture and I brought in my albums from years ago. I made my first sculpture in the summer of 1982: a small arch on Santa Monica Beach, just south of the pier. That led to bigger arches, then fancy arches and then I went back to Nebraska. Some friends got interested, so late the next summer we went to a beach there, on a muddy lake. Sand is still sand, and I surprised myself. That's another story. In late summer of 1984, I was back in Los Angeles, looking for work. In the meantime, I borrowed a friend's car to go to the beach a couple of times a week. I learned a lot that fall, the most important item being that there seemed to be an bottomless source of sand sculpture ideas in me. So, I brought my albums to Steve and he flipped. He took them home to his wife, also an artist, and started talking about coming down to photograph me carving a sculpture. Well, my equipment was still there, in the garage, dusty. Part two was to find sand. Oh, yes, there's plenty of sand out there, but most of it is too coarse and doesn't hold together. I went to the last known hangout for good sand and it was still there. Also there, a real surprise, was Bruce, the lifguard I'd met in 1984. I don't believe in omens, but this felt good. A few days later I was at work in the sand. The result is before you now, a mixture of old and new. The spoon-shaped hole harkens back to the first non-arch sculpture I ever made, and the arches have obvious roots. One new design characteristic sneaked in: the sharp edges on the arches. I used to round everything off, as most of the edges on this one are. The other new idea was a brush for texture on the surface. It didn't work for that, but it did remove the layer of loose sand that my hands leave behind, revealing the pile's layers. The lumpiness of this sculpture is unique and came about because of alternating bands of well- and poorly-compacted sand. Some of these design ideas carried over into the year's next sculpture, 94F-2. It felt good to be back on the beach with the solstice wind blowing salt into my face.
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sgp3note.htm 1999 February 14