The Year in Sand: 2004

My knees hurt. My back hurts. It takes me a few seconds to get out of a chair and stand up straight. I feel as if I've been dragged behind a sled team for a mile or two, without benefit of a sled. Someone threw me out of a truck going about 40 miles per hour. Or just call it simple: I got hit by a truck and left by the side of the road. At least this time it was a small truck.
    "This time?" you ask. "How often is this man run over by a truck? Is this a new hobby?"
"No," I'd say. "It's an old hobby. I used to be able to make a sculpture and then do something else the next day. That was twenty years ago. Tess is the one who coined the name for the problem. "Are you post-sculptural today, Larry?"
    "Yes." No doubt about it. Small things that I try to pick up get dropped, big things that I try to walk around get run into. I'm likely to stand in the middle of the room for several seconds trying to remember why I started moving. And, when I finally do remember, getting my recalcitrant body in motion takes some time.
    The problem is that I can't get my hands on the camera. George and Sandra have been trading off, so I have to settle for shooting with the old, trusted Powershot from over George's shoulder.
    It's my sculpture, and he's using my camera. You'd think he'd be grateful. Instead, he's testy because I'm stealing his shot. If I left this to him, I'd go home with lots of files but only three or four different images. I need a full walkaround. I'm glad I brought the other camera for backup.

Build number: 04F-14 (lifetime start #296); monolith on standard riser
Title: "Learning a New Language"
Date: November 21
Location: Venice Breakwater, on the flat
Start: 0730, construction time 8 hours (approx)
Size: 41" tall, 21" diameter (Latchform), immersion screened mixed 60/40 sand
Helpers: none
Digital Images: 72, with Canon Powershot G2 (see comments)
Photo 35mm: none
Photo 6X7: none
Photo volunteer: Rich, w/Canon Z115, completion; George & Sandra w/EOS1D
Video motion: none
Video still: none
Video volunteer: none
New Equipment: Canon EOS-1D Mark II
Comments: Sandra shot during construction with the 1D; George shot completed piece

    35mm, Instamatic, 6X7, and now digital. I bought my first digital camera in 2002, thinking it would save a lot of time in preparing images for the Web. It did. But what goes on the Web can even more quickly go out by Email, and this entirely supplanted Web development. To this day there's not a single digital image, of the 3400 I made with the Powershot, on my Web site.
    The Canon Powershot was always a temporary solution. I really wanted a single-lens reflex so that I could see what the camera was doing. In September of 2002 the SLRs were too expensive for what they did. They were slow and clunky, asking some sacrifice for the honor of being digital. I declined. Only this year did attractive SLRs come out.

Making a sand sculpture involves all of me. It's a lot of physical work: carrying sand and water, setting up the form and packing the sand in there in a carefully controlled manner. This is after getting the whole kit to the beach by bicycle. After the pile is made I spend the rest of the day moving around, twisting myself into odd postures as I carve it. Carving is very demanding mentally. It's design done on the fly, minimal plan, responding to what I see in the sand. And then I have to load everything back onto the trailer, drag it across the sand (reminding me of those '49ers in the Forty MIle Desert), hook it up and then get the whole outfit home without causing a traffic accident.
    Yesterday was a good day. I got to the beach at around 0700 and started the project by carrying several buckets of fine sand about 150 feet from the low-tide area to my selected construction site. The rest of the sand I'd get from the site itself, and mix it with the finer and darker low-tide sand both to make the pile stronger and to emphasize the layers that form as I pack it.
    I had an idea for the sculpture and actually stayed with part of it, a long spiral from base to top. It developed a kink in the middle for some reason. I guess I just didn't want to hew to any plan, even mine. Then I was going to carve some decorative fine work in the thin sections between major supports. This sort of thing lights up nicely in the sunset.





    In the early afternoon, Rich in his trademark blue jacket came ambling across the sand. I met him in 1995 and he has since been here for almost all my sculpture attempts. He does photography while I work, feeds me cookies and minds the store while I use the restroom, and we tell each other puns and discuss science fiction.
    And then I realized the day was getting away from me. The sun might wait for Elijah, but it won't wait for me to finish a sculpture. I moved fast, got it done and prepared for photography. Then I discovered I had no camera. George and Sandra were trading my EOS 1D back and forth. George is a serious photographer and was put out that I hadn't brought my tripod. Sand sculpture suits his photography style because it doesn't move. Anyway, I needed to get something for my records, so I was glad I had the Powershot along. I shot a walkaround series with that and then was lucky enough to get my hands on the big camera for a minute.





The sun came out between a sheet of cloud and the horizon and we got some nice light, and then it was gone. A red circle, then half circle, then a spark and then gone. The day was over and we were cold. George and Rich helped me pull the trailer to my bike, and then we parted. My ride home was slow but I made it.





Report (unfinished) 2004 November 21
Merged with "Post-Sculptural Syndrome" 2016 January 17