|
96F-20"Panda"September 14 | ||||
|
Los Angeles sweltered in brown air as I flew north to Canada for the World Championship Sand Sculpture Contest. I looked at the land, shades of brown and grey, and wished for rain. Three weeks later I was back on my own beach, under California's bottomless sunshine and glad of it. Rain will do that to a sand sculptor; it's very hard to carve when shivering. It rained every day of the contest. Bruce, driving his bright yellow truck to the lifeguard tower, waved as I pushed my bike to the building site. I've known him since 1984. Warm air caressed my shoulders under the smiling sun. I told him I was glad to be home. Sand sculpture is a process that's very sensitive to small changes in materials and spirit. Harrison Hot Springs, the site of the contest in British Columbia, is on a lake. Fresh water, and the sand was a mixture ranging from rocks down to silt. Even after making test sculptures, I had trouble shaping the sand. Give me a few more years with it and I'll know it as well as Venice sand. Familiar sand, familiar sun, friends and the wind. It felt good to touch the warm sand, shaping its curves without running into heavy grit. Back in my niche, a misplaced Kansas panda with gritty bamboo, I felt good.
This image sequence shows the hazard of having scans made from negatives: color balance is difficult. A local photo lab did the scans. I gave their operator a print as a color guide, but his interpretation was still unbalanced on the last four images. The color is too far off for me to recover and match the other scans. The lesson I've learned is to provide transparencies because the scanner operator can see what the color is supposed to be.
| ||||
sgp6note.htm 1999 February 14