January 1: 04M-1
This was pretty much the last hurrah for the one-day multiple sculpture. For details, read the report which follows the images.
Cross Purposes
Jesus told his disciples a story. "A man called together his servants and gave them money to invest while he was gone. He gave five talents of gold to one servant, two talents to another and one talent to the last, dividing it in proportion to the servants' abilities, and then left on his trip. The servant who received five talents began immediately to invest the money and soon doubled it. The servant who received two talents also doubled the money. But the servant who received the one talent dug a hole in the ground and hid the master's money for safekeeping."
"After a long time their master returned and called the servants to give an account of how they had used his money. The master was full of praise for the two servants who had invested well. 'Well done, my good and faithful servants.'"
"The servant with the one talent said 'Sir, I know you are a hard man. I was afraid I would lose your money so I hid it in the earth, and here it is.'"
"But the master replied 'You wicked and lazy servant! Take the money from this servant and give it to the one with ten talents. To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given and they will have an abundance. But from those who are unfaithful even what little they have will be taken away.'"
"Talent," said Phil, "doesn't count for all that much."
I had been thinking about a career in graphic design because I enjoyed it, and seemed to be good at it.
"Talent makes maybe ten percent of it. The rest is work." Phil said this with some force. At the time I didn't understand. Now I do: the field of art is full of wannabees talking about talent but not wanting to work, as if talent could build a bridge across lack of skills.
Of course, that leads to the question, "What is talent?" I didn't find a good answer, one that satisfied me, until very recently. Eric Bryant provided it: "Where are you creative?"
Put in such simple terms even I can understand it. Where am I creative? There are many ways, I'm afraid, but they all have one characteristic in common. They have no commercial value, and the most purely creative of them all is the most useless.
Build number: 04M-1 (lifetime start #281); 2 units with earthworks
Title: "Cross Currents"
Date: January 1
Location: Venice Breakwater, on the flat
Start: 0730, construction time 8 hours
Unit A: 40 inches tall, 21 inches nominal diameter, immersion screened native sand (Latchform)
Unit B: 32 inches tall, 21 inches nominal diameter, immersion screened native sand (Latchform)
Plan: Unit A on built-up plinth. Unit B in depression at end of long curving trench
Helpers: none
Digital Images: 30, with Canon Powershot G2
Photo 35mm: none
Photo 6X7: none
Photo volunteer: Rich, w/Canon Z115
Video motion: none
Video still: none
Video volunteer: Larry Dudock, w/Elura
New Equipment: none
Visitors: Rich, Lorna, Anna, Russ, Jane, Chris Lee, David
1. Delayed Argument
On June 19, 1994, I resumed sand sculpture after a 7-year hiatus. The sculpture was my 43d start. I'd stopped for reasons partly environmental; working at a sewage treatment plant will give you a different view of ocean water. Mostly, however, I was putting my energy into psychoanalysis. Later in the year I quit the analysis but kept on with sand sculpture. It offered more healing, or, at least, cheaper distraction. I quit for the year in mid-October after an unbroken string of 12 unbroken sculptures, which was a new record. The failure rate until then had been something like 15%.
The 1995 season started May 12. The sculpture fell over but it's a fragile medium. 1994 was a fluke. As the year progressed I finally understood that there was no good reason to quit in the winter. By Kansas standards there is no winter here. I did 1995's last sculpture on December 30, and opened 1996 with the first of what would become an annual event on January 1. From then on sand sculpture assumed a growing portion of the foundational task of keeping my life worth living. I never stopped for longer than a month or two.
Until I ran into a church called Mosaic. Very suddenly I was face to face with God, who offered solutions perhaps more solid than arches made out of sand.
* * *
People ask me what is the appeal of an art form that, after a great deal of work, yields something that not only can't be moved but washes away. My answer is multi-faceted and depends on who's asking. People who seem interested get the whole load. Passersby get one-sentence summaries polished by much repetition.
The long version starts with purity. Sand sculpture will never be owned. To hold onto it is to crush it. The maker's touch has to be just right: enough force to change, gentle enough not to break the fragile connections.
Each piece is forever unique. I work to satisfy only my own requirements. Each sculpture is a reach into someplace beyond mundanity, an attempt to touch and bring back some beauty. Sand, hand and mind work with each other in a sort of quest.
In support of this I make my tools, design and build the necessary equipment, experiment with and develop technology. Discover a problem and design a solution. Build it, find that it doesn't work, try again.
It's a self-generated activity, self-supported, to scratch a very deep itch inside me. From the very beginning, however, that first arch in 1982, what starts with a note inside myself resonates with others.
* * *
Christmas day comes in with rain, cold and wind. Is this God, being unsubtle in the idea that this is a day reserved for Him rather than a lonely sand sculptor? Or did he bring the rain for someone else?
I've gone five months with only a few small free-piled sculptures. Not one of the all-consuming, full effort all day formed sculptures, do your best, thrown everything you have into it and hope for beauty. I'm still paying on Phil's comment. How hard do I have to work?
The problem is that all-consuming part. After the sculpture I'm in a state that friends most gently describe as "Post-sculptural Syndrome," and they know better than to ask of me any task more complex than feeding myself. Mosaic has come to depend on my on-the-fly troubleshooting skills, and this requires that I have a brain instead of guacamole between my ears. This, in turn, precludes major sand sculptures. The first day free of this requirement was Christmas, which was rained out.
Keep me off the beach for a time and I start to get, well, hungry. Especially when it's some artificial entity getting in the way. Well, God isn't really an artificial entity, but is He really the one getting in the way?
I'm afraid to ask him directly. The child's key to doing things: never ask outright. Assume that what's not directly forbidden is permitted, and go do it before you're caught. It's kind of hard to sneak in a sand sculpture, not with a whole lot of clutter on the beach and a lot of pointing fingers, out there under God's own clear sky.
New Year's Eve. There's no end of the argument in sight. Currently it's revolving around serving two masters. Sand sculpture is by necessity a completely absorbing activity, requiring consideration of engineering along with design both local and relational. No matter how beautiful the idea it can't be seen if it falls over. This pretty well excludes the Christian's ideal of constant awareness of God's presence. Could this be construed as trying to serve two masters? From somewhere comes the idea to invite Jesus, as I've invited others, to this event but this is too radical.
The year's first day comes up, cold and dry, with high thin clouds through which some sunlight manages to make its way. I'm still arguing and avoiding argument. The real victim in this fight is design's child. I ride to the beach for the ninth annual New Year Day sculpture, full of conflict, not an image in sight.
2. Quit Thinking and Work
If I weren't mostly convinced of God's disapproval of the whole process I'd consider the setting a gift. Waves smoothed the isthmus of sand behind the Breakwater into a perfect stage. The tide has just revealed this space, and the sand is still wet.
It's the oldest trick in the survival manual. When in doubt, act. If God is really displeased with this, He has many ways to get through to me. I pick up my shovel, choose a spot and start digging. The cold wet sand burns my feet until they no longer feel anything. Another old technique for a sensitive person living in a world of glass shards.
Sand on the beach is sorted vertically, with coarser sand always accessible above the highest tides. Finer sand, better for sculpting, is about four feet vertically below that. Today's morning high tide prevents access to the good sand. One way to handle this is to come down the afternoon before and haul the fine sand to the next day's building site above the high tide, but improved packing techniques have enabled me to produce good sculptures with the coarser high-tide sand. After building a base I set the form on top and just go right on, enlarging the borrow pit around the sculpture so that it will become part of the design.
Packing sand is mindless work. I usually think about the sculpture's design but today nothing is happening, no images, no plans. Rarely have I been so bereft of sculptural ideas.
* * *
In the old days I lived for sand sculpture. Work was a way to keep food on the table and in quiet times there I'd make sculptures in my mind. There were always more ideas than days on the beach.
One day a man walked up, looked at the unfinished sculpture, and asked "What is it?"
"Whatever you'd like it to be."
"You've been blessed by God to make this."
"Well, it does feel like a gift, and I'm glad. Creativity is the only reason I can think of to continue living, and sand sculpture is a great way to be creative."
"Sand sculpture is your reason for living?" I can hear the skepticism.
"Creativity in general. Sand sculpture is one part."
He wanders off. "I'm guilty," I said to my friend Rich. "Baiting evangelicals is just too easy."
I met another evangelical on the beach a year later. He was a different kind of man, much more humble, and I was running out of momentum. That conversation was much different.
* * *
Cut and fill. Sand comes out of the borrow pit and goes into the form. I shape the pit and decide to make two sculptures in a setting of earthworks. Coarse sand encourages simpler sculptures, so I tend to do two or three with the hope that simple sculptures in a simple setting combine to something strong and unique. Sometimes it works. The main thing I've learned in making multiple sculptures is that there are many new ways in which to fail.
I peel the first pile and then set up the form again on the levelled bottom of one end of the borrow pit, hoping that the pit's curving wall will link the two. There's a large peninsula between the two. I have a vague idea that this will somehow help the design, but no real plan. In sand sculpture the mass of materials pretty well means that whatever you decide, you're stuck with.
Forty minutes or so later the second pile is finished. Being founded in a hole it will take longer for the excess water to drain out, but this isn't a problem. I have Unit A to carve, up there on its riser base about eight feet away. There are no more excuses, no more reasons to put off this confrontation.
3. Serving Multiple Masters
All of the hours spent thinking, planning, making, end at this point. I pick up a tool and make the first cut; sand falls irretrievably away.
Coarse sand piles aren't as strong as ones made from fine sand. This limits the amount of overhang I can get away with, and means that the sculpture's parts have to be thicker. Within those limits, however, is a lot of space to explore. Over the years engineering, rather than being the whole story, has retreated to supporting design.
At first my vision for this sculpture is quite simple: a tall slab, gently curved, with some braided openings in it. This will allow me to carve some kind of similar design in the other piece to make a connection between them.
* * *
What is the nature of hope? This is what Mosaic sells and I certainly need some. It's billed as a church for creative people. The problem I've run into is that my relentlessly non-commercial true creativity has no place for expression there. Sand isn't portable, stories can't be sung and I'm no actor.
What I'm left with is meta-creativity, those processes which I've learned in support of the others. Trouble-shooting, problem solving, general communication and writing skills, and all under the control of someone else's plans. What would it take to make me feel I'm really a part of this community?
Is art truly art when it's in service to anything? I think not, seeing the effects of commercialization in all but the very strongest of artists. Weak ones turn into Thomas Kincaid or Wyland, and keep doing the same things but bigger and fancier. Or George Lucas. I want story, he keeps giving me special effects. I refuse to be like the man who carves mermaids from sand on the boardwalk. "I do this because it's what people will pay for."
Is this what God expects? Tame sand sculpture? How can you tame something that dies as soon as it's touched by the lasso? Am I expected to give this up entirely? Could this be the sacrifice that Erwin talks about?
Yes, sand sculpture has been a survival mechanism, but it is more than that. It's an exploration, an experiment, an attempt to touch beauty driven by feelings I'm only hazily aware of. The touch of my hand on the sand still gives me a thrill as the sand responds so subtly.
* * *
Sand, however, whispers its own suggestions. What about this? Or this? Or a small mark left by my hand in doing something else might suggest a new element, and soon I'm led far afield from where I intended to be. Delightful distraction. Four hours later the situation is absolutely hopeless: a sculpture that, on its own, would be fine, but it's saddled with an overwrought base and the other pile, still wrapped in its jacket. How will I ever carve it into something that will complement Unit A in the two hour remnant daylight?
There's nothing to do but try. I take the form away, wash it and put it away on the trailer. Then I go after the block of sand with great strokes. There is no plan. Just carve.
"If you keep going like that, you're going to end up with a molar that has cavities."
"There is some tooth in what you say, Rich."
"That was an incisive comment," Rich's son Eric contributes.
"Oh, don't get carried away with this."
* * *
New Year Day is usually busy. Today it started at about 0800 with a man looking for the Penguin Swim, the annual event that starts at noon and draws people to take their first ocean swim of the year, no matter what. One year it ran in the rain. Another year the surf was ferocious, real sand-filled grinders out there to chew up the unprepared. The swimmers have come and gone on an easy day, but the psychothermic index was far too low for me to be interested. At least I can feel my feet. Puns aren't a problem, especially when I'm tired enough that the internal censor is napping.
I turn around and pick up the spray wand from the bucket where it's parked. Water is nearly overflowing from what used to be about three-quarters full.
"So that's where all my water is going. I try to spray but the thing's empty. The valve isn't cutting it off."
"It's a good Christian tool," Rich says instantly. "You're supposed to spray without ceasing."
I'm stopped in my tracks, laughing. "That's perfect, Rich. You get the pun prize for today."
"Good. You're already gotten the Johnson Abstract Prize."
"That's great. You're fooled, are you?"
"Yes. I can't see anything in the sculpture."
This is an immediate challenge for everyone else. Naomi Anna thinks it's an elephant, or an angel. Unless it's a sphinx. I just keep working. Otherwise I'd be asphinxiated with ideas.
"I can see a dancer in there. See? There are the legs? and the arm, coming down there."
"Oh, yes, I see it now."
"I think you're both much more imaginative than I am," and I pick up another tool and go back to carving.
* * *
"I really like what you're doing. It's free."
"Thank you." I turn and face a man who's crouched on the sand beside me.
"I'd like to have time to do something like this."
"It does take a commitment of time, but I schedule it. Sand sculpture is a priority." Well, it used to be. "I need the freedom. I thought about being a graphic designer once, but realized I'd have a hard time with clients' bad taste."
"Yes. I used to do that. For work. Now I write and draw, mainly for fun."
"Oh? what do you write?"
"It used to be technical articles." And then he blushes. "Now, well, now I write and edit articles for a magazine for the "Lord of the Rings" movies.
"Wow."
"Oh, it's nothing that great."
"You know, I've never seen the movies, and have no intention to do so. I have too much respect for the book, which is one of my favorites."
"You're right. Good for you. The movies are a travesty."
"My sister has seen them and said that some key elements were left out, such as Galadriel's gifts."
"That, and the scouring of the Shire, and that meeting with the Mouth of Sauron. I really couldn't believe Jackson left that out."
"I read the book every couple of years, when I need a reminder of what people can do when they let their creativity go." As much as I enjoy talking with some of the passersby, they're still somewhat of a problem. Cold winter days are better. But today is a more social occasion, and there have been interesting people here. They've given me a lift, which I needed, and I was already distracted.
4. The Feeling of Failure
As I clean up Unit B I can tell this thing just isn't coming together. All the confusion has resulted in rehashing ideas that didn't work a year ago and don't work now. All I can say for this one is that its default designs are more attractive than the defaults used to be. It's very far from what I wanted.
And yet, it does have some nice individual features. Unit A has nice surprises inside, and is the hardest to clean up that I've ever made.
The earthworks are the major problem. Contributing to nothing but an aching back. I knew this, but forgot. Keep the base simple when the sculptures stand up like this. Otherwise it's just a distraction. The problem here is that the earthworks always come at the end of the day and get only the dregs of my energy.
There is simply too much useless mass lying around for the two sculptures to pull everything into a whole sculpture. Free-piled experiments had shown that the closer together are the units of a multiple the better they communicate.
Failure is dismal, even when the sculptures are standing. I so much want that numinous vision to come out. It has happened. Not today, however.
5. Reality versus Fantasy
I put the final finishing touches on and then stand for a few minutes talking with Chris. He'd walked up a few minutes earlier and I'd introduced him to the other friends who have come out for the day.
We watch the light change on the sculpture and catch up on news. It really isn't a bad sculpture. Confused, yes, a sort of free-pile sensibility carried into this more vertical format where it doesn't work so well. What's amazing is that it works mechanically.
A few years ago I was feeling that I was underutilizing the ability of the sand blocks I made. They were very strong but I wasn't hollowing them out very much. I pressed forward and got into lighter work but still was short of what could be done. This sculpture proves it. Lighter than many of its ancestors made from better sand, it might herald the end of translocated sand, which would cut the workload greatly.
Unit B is a sort of understudy with no future. Short, down in a hole, surrounded by massive earthworks. As part of a more appropriately designed multiple it would have worked well.
That's the risk of the multiple. Make two good sculptures but they don't belong with each other and the overall vision fails, reinforced by an inappropriate base.
The further reality is that the day is beautiful. Morning cold has given way to afternoon warmth under a golden sun, with a little breeze flitting around. A few surfers are getting good rides, and one person has even persuaded a kite to take flight. I don't know how that was managed, but Rich points out the flag on the lifeguard tower that flutters encouragingly. Down where we are the air is still. Anna takes advantage of this to play her flute as Lorna sings along.
Various passersby stop to ask the usual questions. One family seems very interested, so I give them a quick free-piling demonstration and then show how to carve with a clamshell. No tools. Run what you brung. Tools just enable faster work with more detail, both of which can lead one down paths far from beauty.
6. Colors of the Sky
We have about 45 minutes of daylight left. Clouds near the horizon make that estimate even more questionable. I turn to Chris.
"I'd better start taking photographs." Wonderful yellow light floods the sculpture.
"You haven't done that already," Rich asks.
"Nope. Others have been doing so." He wanders off to talk with Lorna. I fetch my camera. If I could move I might do more creative angles, but as it is kneeling for low shots is a problem. It's real work to get back onto my feet, so sometimes I just shuffle around on already abraded knees.
"Are you sunburned?" Naomi Anna asks.
"No. Just crawling around in the sand."
A cloud blocks the sun and our light turns to cement. A few minutes later it's back, and then the sun's touching the horizon under the band of low dark offshore clouds. Above those is a sheet of silver that turns gold after the sun goes around Earth's curve. The gold deepens, darkens, turns reddish and gains purple fringes. And then something far to the west quenches the light, except up very high where some mare's tails still burn in the elevated day.
I do a last tool check, pick up the trailer's tow strap, and start walking. Chris and Eric push and we get over the dry sand quickly.
"That's the hardest part of the day. Thanks for your help."
"You're going home first, and then to the restaurant?"
"Yes."
"OK. We'll see you there."
"Chris, are you here on a bike?"
"No. I ran."
We head north along the sand-covered bike path. My tired legs push me along at a good pace for Chris to jog, and we talk as we go. I leave him at his apartment and struggle up the hill to home.
7. Meeting of Two Worlds
"Go left, then they're on the right," Chris says.
The instructions are too complex for me to figure out. I wander around, come back out again, go inside again and wander around some more. They shouldn't leave me alone in this state. And then I hear a recognizable voice and follow it to a big round table. Someone everyone has made it here faster than I did. Except for Larry, who had to haul his own equipment off the beach.
There are eight of us. Lorna and Rich I've known since 1995 when I did a slide show for the Sierra Club Camera Committee. Jane and Russ I met earlier than that, in 1992 or so, on various motorcycle rides. Naomi Anna has been coming out to the New Year Day sculptures for a few years. Larry I met in 1997 through Email prompted by sand sculpture questions; he moved out here last year so he could sculpt year round. And then Chris, met this year through Mosaic, the sole representative of that new world.
I have a foot in each world. I make an uneasy bridge, but today has been a success.
"How's the calamari?"
"I don't know because I don't like squid in general. Everything I've had here has been good, and everyone I've brought here has been pleased."
We pass around the menus, order, talk. I fade in and out, encouraged by a bottle of Negra Modelo.
"What is this, 'dos X X?'" Lorna asks, looking at the menu.
"Mexican beer. Light."
"Not bad, though."
"I prefer the Negra Modelo."
"Chris, what's your connection here?"
"Mosaic. I met Larry there a couple of months ago." Everyone here knows what Mosaic is because I've sent them the stories.
"You were right. The calamari is good." That's a relief. Of course, they were already hooked by the fresh tortillas. Conversations swirl around much faster than I can keep up with.
Each of our plates has a mystery vegetable. We sample and can't figure it out.
"Jicama."
"No. Turnip, maybe?"
"Could be. It has little flavor. Or rutabaga."
"You're kidding. Rutabagas have lots of flavor."
"So do turnips."
"You mean there's a difference? I thought a rutabaga was just sort of a big turnip."
"No, they're different."
A waiter comes by. I point and ask.
"Mexican squash."
"Oh, yes," Lorna says. "The kind that turns back in at the end."
"I've seen those."
Whatever it is, I like it. Of course, I'd like almost anything right now. Especially bed. We settle up and leave.
"Good night. Thanks for coming out."
"Happy new year!"
"Yes, indeed. A good start."
Chris and I walk across Lincoln and past the laundromat. If I stay with him I'm less likely to get lost. When he turns me loose I'm nearly home. I ride the rest of the way. All that's left is to wash the sand off. It feels like midnight but the clock says 1958. Tension will do that. Maybe sleep will bring some resolution. Probably not.
8. Afterward
At issue isn't so much one sand sculpture, but a process. The mistakes I made in this sculpture were similar to mistakes made a year ago. That's what interruption does: I forget, the hands forget. All the skills deteriorate. Design, carving, earthworks, integration. Being good at anything requires practice. The major gift of sand sculpture is that it doesn't feel like practice to me. It's always enjoyable, that simple act of carving a shape from packed sand.
Perhaps Phil (Mosaic, not Colorado State) had the right of it when he wrote, in response to my worries about doing a sculpture on Christmas day, "I think you could use it as an expression of worship for the Savior, not just on Christmas day, but year round. He is the creator of the universe and has given you the capacity to create. What a great expression of worship on Christmas. Expressions of faith through art is as old as art. Tolkein created the Lord of the Rings as an expression of his faith in Christ. A fantasy story as an expression of faith, and a good one at that. Sand sculpture seems pretty reasonable to me."
* * *
"Moses said to the Israelites, 'The Lord has chosen Bezalel, the son of Uri and grandson of Hur from the tribe of Judah. God has filled him with his power and given him skill, ability, and understanding for every kind of artistic work, for planning skillful designs and working them in gold, silver and bronze; for cutting jewels to be set; for carving wood; and for every other kind of artistic work.' Isn't that great?" Erwin asks. "The first man to be filled with God's Holy Spirit, and he's an ARTIST!" This was the last message for 2003, a potpourri of ideas and plans, with some history thrown into the usual lively mix.
I was encouraged by this until I realized the verses describe a man who's being tapped to help design and build the Temple in Jerusalem. His skills are very useful. More, I was thinking about the verse about serving two masters. Sand or God? Do I have a real choice, or is a choice even necessary? The verse actually reads "No one can serve two masters. For you will love one and hate the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."
There's nothing about money on the beach. Time, yes, but even in the middle of designing and carving I felt only the estrangement of an unresolved argument, not a severing of my connection with God. I know the difference.
I open the 2004 Tidelog and look for dates with good tides. They start in February and improve from there through the spring. What I need is God's blessing on this, not Mosaic's.
The first clear concept to emerge from the collision of Christian and beach experience is that talent is to be used. God gives people talents for reasons, and with talent comes responsibility I don't really want. Too bad, Larry. "Use it or lose it," I know. "Use it or disappoint God" is new.
Or could it just be that God likes sand sculpture? I wonder if Phil is right about creativity and worship. Well, if I get enough courage I'll ask God about this.
A second concept, not so clear, comes to mind. I'm all set up to fight God for my right to do sand sculpture, but has He ever opposed this? He gave no sign of being upset with the free-piled post-Mosaic sculptures.
9. On the Separation of Church and God
"Good morning, Lord."
It's still dark outside. Leftover rain drips regularly, metallically, in a neighbor's downspout.
I've given God other aspects of my life that I thought were more dear than sand sculpture, but it's becoming very apparent that I underestimated the sculpture's importance, and that of the church. Mosaic reanimated a nearly dead dream that had been sublimated for years in sand. Immediately after that the church pointed to the source of the dream and I hit the road, drawn irresistibly.
God is writing new life into my mismanaged life. I can actually think of a time soon to come when I can look forward to getting up in the morning.
Now, I'm not sure what the nature of that life will be. All I know is that God takes better care of me than I ever have. He knows how I'm made. I have a very strong desire to make things, preferrably beautiful and complex things with no limits of purpose or concept. As God replants the wasteland I have no idea what will grow. Sand sculpture is the biggest of the remnant few green spots amid the slag. I invented it, developed it, practiced it in sessions that didn't feel like practice, let my spirit fly off of its restricted ballistic course into places that otherwise couldn't be seen. It would hurt to lose this.
* * *
"Is not God the god of creation. Mine is, whether it has any existence outside my head or not. Therefore love god and do as you will, as the saint said (I don't remember which: you arethe expert on saints now). When you do, then whatever you want is what god wants.
Go and fret no more.
All the best,
Rich"
* * *
"Why do you think God would disapprove of sand sculpture?
I see no conflict at all. To be outdoors with natural things and to work creatively is spirituality of the highest order.
I have always felt more "spiritual" or "religious" when outdoors with creatures, plants, forests, sea, snow, etc.
You are on a good journey and doing well, as I see it.
Lorna"
* * *
"How'd the sculpture go?"
"Confused." Mauricio and I are sitting on his kitchen floor with all of his children's building blocks between us.
"How so?"
I pick up a tapered block and put it against another in the tower I'm building as I try to figure out what to say. Make it simple. Tell him the whole story.
"I hadn't thought about the design, as I usually do."
"Well, yes, you've had other things to think about."
"Right. Besides that I was arguing with God." He looks very attentive at that. "I was afraid he'd say 'No' if I asked him if I could do a sculpture. So, I didn't ask, and hoped he'd ignore me. You're probably very familiar with this."
"Oh, yes."
"So, there I am on the beach, sculpting. No judgement, but still no plan, and pretty much stone cold. I haven't done a big sculpture in months." I place another block, but this one unbalances the tower. It falls over and wipes out Amelia's elephant's legs. "I'm sorry, Amelia." We both start building again.
"The sculpture never really came together. There were nice elements. The important things happened after I got home, having gotten away with it; two thoughts. One, no judgement. Two, skills that are currently used in sand sculpture could be useful elsewhere, and maybe in something that satisfies me even more than carving sand does. Hard to imagine, but possible."
"Interesting." He gets up and walks toward the bedroom. "Oh, by the way, we have something for you." He hands me a big cylindric container of Tinkertoys.
"Wow. Thank you. I have just the use for this. I'm going to a birthday party tonight, and the Tinkertoys will fit perfectly." We go on building until I have to leave.
The sun has set, beyond Mt. Pinos, but long feathers of wind clouds glow reddish gold above Liebre Mountain against a darkening sky. The snow I'd seen on the way up is gone.
* * *
"Hi, Chris. Happy birthday!"
"Thank you. You brought pizza? Great!"
"The last time I did this I had them deliver it. Took two hours. So I picked it up on the way down." Balancing two pizzas on the handlbars as I rode through Marina del Rey. Other guests are wandering around with plates of food. I snag some chicken and head for the living room, needing a chance to sit down.
Andy sits down on the couch. "How was your new year?"
"Pretty good. I did the ninth annual sculpture."
"You do a sculpture for the New Year?"
"Yes. To celebrate the fact that I no longer live in Kansas and can go barefoot in January."
"How did it turn out?"
"Confused. Very tense." I tell him the story. "And so, it seems that God accepts my need to make sculptures. I'm not sure why."
"I can see ways to use it as a witness."
His ideas are more detailed than mine. I simply think that anything beautiful speaks of God. Not that all of my sculptures are beautiful--I'm running around one in twenty, these days--but the attempts count for something. Later we start building things out of Tinkertoys, and it's quite a sight to see. Adults playing, having fun making simple things designed on the spot. It's amazing what people can make when they sidestep the judgement.
I ride home through the cold damp sea air. The Venice Boardwalk is quiet, for once. The bike's tires whisper on the sandy smooth concrete. Slow. It has been a long couple of days.
2004 January 2, 3, 9
Edited and reformatted for the Web 2005 June 22
Bible references:
Leader: Matthew 15:14-29 condensed, New Living Translation
Afterward: Exodus 35:30-33, Good News Translation, and Matthew 6:24, GNT
Email from Rich Johnson, 2004 January 3
Email from Lorna McClellan, 2004 January 3
Cross Purposes
Jesus told his disciples a story. "A man called together his servants and gave them money to invest while he was gone. He gave five talents of gold to one servant, two talents to another and one talent to the last, dividing it in proportion to the servants' abilities, and then left on his trip. The servant who received five talents began immediately to invest the money and soon doubled it. The servant who received two talents also doubled the money. But the servant who received the one talent dug a hole in the ground and hid the master's money for safekeeping."
"After a long time their master returned and called the servants to give an account of how they had used his money. The master was full of praise for the two servants who had invested well. 'Well done, my good and faithful servants.'"
"The servant with the one talent said 'Sir, I know you are a hard man. I was afraid I would lose your money so I hid it in the earth, and here it is.'"
"But the master replied 'You wicked and lazy servant! Take the money from this servant and give it to the one with ten talents. To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given and they will have an abundance. But from those who are unfaithful even what little they have will be taken away.'"
"Talent," said Phil, "doesn't count for all that much."
I had been thinking about a career in graphic design because I enjoyed it, and seemed to be good at it.
"Talent makes maybe ten percent of it. The rest is work." Phil said this with some force. At the time I didn't understand. Now I do: the field of art is full of wannabees talking about talent but not wanting to work, as if talent could build a bridge across lack of skills.
Of course, that leads to the question, "What is talent?" I didn't find a good answer, one that satisfied me, until very recently. Eric Bryant provided it: "Where are you creative?"
Put in such simple terms even I can understand it. Where am I creative? There are many ways, I'm afraid, but they all have one characteristic in common. They have no commercial value, and the most purely creative of them all is the most useless.
Build number: 04M-1 (lifetime start #281); 2 units with earthworks
Title: "Cross Currents"
Date: January 1
Location: Venice Breakwater, on the flat
Start: 0730, construction time 8 hours
Unit A: 40 inches tall, 21 inches nominal diameter, immersion screened native sand (Latchform)
Unit B: 32 inches tall, 21 inches nominal diameter, immersion screened native sand (Latchform)
Plan: Unit A on built-up plinth. Unit B in depression at end of long curving trench
Helpers: none
Digital Images: 30, with Canon Powershot G2
Photo 35mm: none
Photo 6X7: none
Photo volunteer: Rich, w/Canon Z115
Video motion: none
Video still: none
Video volunteer: Larry Dudock, w/Elura
New Equipment: none
Visitors: Rich, Lorna, Anna, Russ, Jane, Chris Lee, David
1. Delayed Argument
On June 19, 1994, I resumed sand sculpture after a 7-year hiatus. The sculpture was my 43d start. I'd stopped for reasons partly environmental; working at a sewage treatment plant will give you a different view of ocean water. Mostly, however, I was putting my energy into psychoanalysis. Later in the year I quit the analysis but kept on with sand sculpture. It offered more healing, or, at least, cheaper distraction. I quit for the year in mid-October after an unbroken string of 12 unbroken sculptures, which was a new record. The failure rate until then had been something like 15%.
The 1995 season started May 12. The sculpture fell over but it's a fragile medium. 1994 was a fluke. As the year progressed I finally understood that there was no good reason to quit in the winter. By Kansas standards there is no winter here. I did 1995's last sculpture on December 30, and opened 1996 with the first of what would become an annual event on January 1. From then on sand sculpture assumed a growing portion of the foundational task of keeping my life worth living. I never stopped for longer than a month or two.
Until I ran into a church called Mosaic. Very suddenly I was face to face with God, who offered solutions perhaps more solid than arches made out of sand.
* * *
People ask me what is the appeal of an art form that, after a great deal of work, yields something that not only can't be moved but washes away. My answer is multi-faceted and depends on who's asking. People who seem interested get the whole load. Passersby get one-sentence summaries polished by much repetition.
The long version starts with purity. Sand sculpture will never be owned. To hold onto it is to crush it. The maker's touch has to be just right: enough force to change, gentle enough not to break the fragile connections.
Each piece is forever unique. I work to satisfy only my own requirements. Each sculpture is a reach into someplace beyond mundanity, an attempt to touch and bring back some beauty. Sand, hand and mind work with each other in a sort of quest.
In support of this I make my tools, design and build the necessary equipment, experiment with and develop technology. Discover a problem and design a solution. Build it, find that it doesn't work, try again.
It's a self-generated activity, self-supported, to scratch a very deep itch inside me. From the very beginning, however, that first arch in 1982, what starts with a note inside myself resonates with others.
* * *
Christmas day comes in with rain, cold and wind. Is this God, being unsubtle in the idea that this is a day reserved for Him rather than a lonely sand sculptor? Or did he bring the rain for someone else?
I've gone five months with only a few small free-piled sculptures. Not one of the all-consuming, full effort all day formed sculptures, do your best, thrown everything you have into it and hope for beauty. I'm still paying on Phil's comment. How hard do I have to work?
The problem is that all-consuming part. After the sculpture I'm in a state that friends most gently describe as "Post-sculptural Syndrome," and they know better than to ask of me any task more complex than feeding myself. Mosaic has come to depend on my on-the-fly troubleshooting skills, and this requires that I have a brain instead of guacamole between my ears. This, in turn, precludes major sand sculptures. The first day free of this requirement was Christmas, which was rained out.
Keep me off the beach for a time and I start to get, well, hungry. Especially when it's some artificial entity getting in the way. Well, God isn't really an artificial entity, but is He really the one getting in the way?
I'm afraid to ask him directly. The child's key to doing things: never ask outright. Assume that what's not directly forbidden is permitted, and go do it before you're caught. It's kind of hard to sneak in a sand sculpture, not with a whole lot of clutter on the beach and a lot of pointing fingers, out there under God's own clear sky.
New Year's Eve. There's no end of the argument in sight. Currently it's revolving around serving two masters. Sand sculpture is by necessity a completely absorbing activity, requiring consideration of engineering along with design both local and relational. No matter how beautiful the idea it can't be seen if it falls over. This pretty well excludes the Christian's ideal of constant awareness of God's presence. Could this be construed as trying to serve two masters? From somewhere comes the idea to invite Jesus, as I've invited others, to this event but this is too radical.
The year's first day comes up, cold and dry, with high thin clouds through which some sunlight manages to make its way. I'm still arguing and avoiding argument. The real victim in this fight is design's child. I ride to the beach for the ninth annual New Year Day sculpture, full of conflict, not an image in sight.
2. Quit Thinking and Work
If I weren't mostly convinced of God's disapproval of the whole process I'd consider the setting a gift. Waves smoothed the isthmus of sand behind the Breakwater into a perfect stage. The tide has just revealed this space, and the sand is still wet.
It's the oldest trick in the survival manual. When in doubt, act. If God is really displeased with this, He has many ways to get through to me. I pick up my shovel, choose a spot and start digging. The cold wet sand burns my feet until they no longer feel anything. Another old technique for a sensitive person living in a world of glass shards.
Sand on the beach is sorted vertically, with coarser sand always accessible above the highest tides. Finer sand, better for sculpting, is about four feet vertically below that. Today's morning high tide prevents access to the good sand. One way to handle this is to come down the afternoon before and haul the fine sand to the next day's building site above the high tide, but improved packing techniques have enabled me to produce good sculptures with the coarser high-tide sand. After building a base I set the form on top and just go right on, enlarging the borrow pit around the sculpture so that it will become part of the design.
Packing sand is mindless work. I usually think about the sculpture's design but today nothing is happening, no images, no plans. Rarely have I been so bereft of sculptural ideas.
* * *
In the old days I lived for sand sculpture. Work was a way to keep food on the table and in quiet times there I'd make sculptures in my mind. There were always more ideas than days on the beach.
One day a man walked up, looked at the unfinished sculpture, and asked "What is it?"
"Whatever you'd like it to be."
"You've been blessed by God to make this."
"Well, it does feel like a gift, and I'm glad. Creativity is the only reason I can think of to continue living, and sand sculpture is a great way to be creative."
"Sand sculpture is your reason for living?" I can hear the skepticism.
"Creativity in general. Sand sculpture is one part."
He wanders off. "I'm guilty," I said to my friend Rich. "Baiting evangelicals is just too easy."
I met another evangelical on the beach a year later. He was a different kind of man, much more humble, and I was running out of momentum. That conversation was much different.
* * *
Cut and fill. Sand comes out of the borrow pit and goes into the form. I shape the pit and decide to make two sculptures in a setting of earthworks. Coarse sand encourages simpler sculptures, so I tend to do two or three with the hope that simple sculptures in a simple setting combine to something strong and unique. Sometimes it works. The main thing I've learned in making multiple sculptures is that there are many new ways in which to fail.
I peel the first pile and then set up the form again on the levelled bottom of one end of the borrow pit, hoping that the pit's curving wall will link the two. There's a large peninsula between the two. I have a vague idea that this will somehow help the design, but no real plan. In sand sculpture the mass of materials pretty well means that whatever you decide, you're stuck with.
Forty minutes or so later the second pile is finished. Being founded in a hole it will take longer for the excess water to drain out, but this isn't a problem. I have Unit A to carve, up there on its riser base about eight feet away. There are no more excuses, no more reasons to put off this confrontation.
3. Serving Multiple Masters
All of the hours spent thinking, planning, making, end at this point. I pick up a tool and make the first cut; sand falls irretrievably away.
Coarse sand piles aren't as strong as ones made from fine sand. This limits the amount of overhang I can get away with, and means that the sculpture's parts have to be thicker. Within those limits, however, is a lot of space to explore. Over the years engineering, rather than being the whole story, has retreated to supporting design.
At first my vision for this sculpture is quite simple: a tall slab, gently curved, with some braided openings in it. This will allow me to carve some kind of similar design in the other piece to make a connection between them.
* * *
What is the nature of hope? This is what Mosaic sells and I certainly need some. It's billed as a church for creative people. The problem I've run into is that my relentlessly non-commercial true creativity has no place for expression there. Sand isn't portable, stories can't be sung and I'm no actor.
What I'm left with is meta-creativity, those processes which I've learned in support of the others. Trouble-shooting, problem solving, general communication and writing skills, and all under the control of someone else's plans. What would it take to make me feel I'm really a part of this community?
Is art truly art when it's in service to anything? I think not, seeing the effects of commercialization in all but the very strongest of artists. Weak ones turn into Thomas Kincaid or Wyland, and keep doing the same things but bigger and fancier. Or George Lucas. I want story, he keeps giving me special effects. I refuse to be like the man who carves mermaids from sand on the boardwalk. "I do this because it's what people will pay for."
Is this what God expects? Tame sand sculpture? How can you tame something that dies as soon as it's touched by the lasso? Am I expected to give this up entirely? Could this be the sacrifice that Erwin talks about?
Yes, sand sculpture has been a survival mechanism, but it is more than that. It's an exploration, an experiment, an attempt to touch beauty driven by feelings I'm only hazily aware of. The touch of my hand on the sand still gives me a thrill as the sand responds so subtly.
* * *
Sand, however, whispers its own suggestions. What about this? Or this? Or a small mark left by my hand in doing something else might suggest a new element, and soon I'm led far afield from where I intended to be. Delightful distraction. Four hours later the situation is absolutely hopeless: a sculpture that, on its own, would be fine, but it's saddled with an overwrought base and the other pile, still wrapped in its jacket. How will I ever carve it into something that will complement Unit A in the two hour remnant daylight?
There's nothing to do but try. I take the form away, wash it and put it away on the trailer. Then I go after the block of sand with great strokes. There is no plan. Just carve.
"If you keep going like that, you're going to end up with a molar that has cavities."
"There is some tooth in what you say, Rich."
"That was an incisive comment," Rich's son Eric contributes.
"Oh, don't get carried away with this."
* * *
New Year Day is usually busy. Today it started at about 0800 with a man looking for the Penguin Swim, the annual event that starts at noon and draws people to take their first ocean swim of the year, no matter what. One year it ran in the rain. Another year the surf was ferocious, real sand-filled grinders out there to chew up the unprepared. The swimmers have come and gone on an easy day, but the psychothermic index was far too low for me to be interested. At least I can feel my feet. Puns aren't a problem, especially when I'm tired enough that the internal censor is napping.
I turn around and pick up the spray wand from the bucket where it's parked. Water is nearly overflowing from what used to be about three-quarters full.
"So that's where all my water is going. I try to spray but the thing's empty. The valve isn't cutting it off."
"It's a good Christian tool," Rich says instantly. "You're supposed to spray without ceasing."
I'm stopped in my tracks, laughing. "That's perfect, Rich. You get the pun prize for today."
"Good. You're already gotten the Johnson Abstract Prize."
"That's great. You're fooled, are you?"
"Yes. I can't see anything in the sculpture."
This is an immediate challenge for everyone else. Naomi Anna thinks it's an elephant, or an angel. Unless it's a sphinx. I just keep working. Otherwise I'd be asphinxiated with ideas.
"I can see a dancer in there. See? There are the legs? and the arm, coming down there."
"Oh, yes, I see it now."
"I think you're both much more imaginative than I am," and I pick up another tool and go back to carving.
* * *
"I really like what you're doing. It's free."
"Thank you." I turn and face a man who's crouched on the sand beside me.
"I'd like to have time to do something like this."
"It does take a commitment of time, but I schedule it. Sand sculpture is a priority." Well, it used to be. "I need the freedom. I thought about being a graphic designer once, but realized I'd have a hard time with clients' bad taste."
"Yes. I used to do that. For work. Now I write and draw, mainly for fun."
"Oh? what do you write?"
"It used to be technical articles." And then he blushes. "Now, well, now I write and edit articles for a magazine for the "Lord of the Rings" movies.
"Wow."
"Oh, it's nothing that great."
"You know, I've never seen the movies, and have no intention to do so. I have too much respect for the book, which is one of my favorites."
"You're right. Good for you. The movies are a travesty."
"My sister has seen them and said that some key elements were left out, such as Galadriel's gifts."
"That, and the scouring of the Shire, and that meeting with the Mouth of Sauron. I really couldn't believe Jackson left that out."
"I read the book every couple of years, when I need a reminder of what people can do when they let their creativity go." As much as I enjoy talking with some of the passersby, they're still somewhat of a problem. Cold winter days are better. But today is a more social occasion, and there have been interesting people here. They've given me a lift, which I needed, and I was already distracted.
4. The Feeling of Failure
As I clean up Unit B I can tell this thing just isn't coming together. All the confusion has resulted in rehashing ideas that didn't work a year ago and don't work now. All I can say for this one is that its default designs are more attractive than the defaults used to be. It's very far from what I wanted.
And yet, it does have some nice individual features. Unit A has nice surprises inside, and is the hardest to clean up that I've ever made.
The earthworks are the major problem. Contributing to nothing but an aching back. I knew this, but forgot. Keep the base simple when the sculptures stand up like this. Otherwise it's just a distraction. The problem here is that the earthworks always come at the end of the day and get only the dregs of my energy.
There is simply too much useless mass lying around for the two sculptures to pull everything into a whole sculpture. Free-piled experiments had shown that the closer together are the units of a multiple the better they communicate.
Failure is dismal, even when the sculptures are standing. I so much want that numinous vision to come out. It has happened. Not today, however.
5. Reality versus Fantasy
I put the final finishing touches on and then stand for a few minutes talking with Chris. He'd walked up a few minutes earlier and I'd introduced him to the other friends who have come out for the day.
We watch the light change on the sculpture and catch up on news. It really isn't a bad sculpture. Confused, yes, a sort of free-pile sensibility carried into this more vertical format where it doesn't work so well. What's amazing is that it works mechanically.
A few years ago I was feeling that I was underutilizing the ability of the sand blocks I made. They were very strong but I wasn't hollowing them out very much. I pressed forward and got into lighter work but still was short of what could be done. This sculpture proves it. Lighter than many of its ancestors made from better sand, it might herald the end of translocated sand, which would cut the workload greatly.
Unit B is a sort of understudy with no future. Short, down in a hole, surrounded by massive earthworks. As part of a more appropriately designed multiple it would have worked well.
That's the risk of the multiple. Make two good sculptures but they don't belong with each other and the overall vision fails, reinforced by an inappropriate base.
The further reality is that the day is beautiful. Morning cold has given way to afternoon warmth under a golden sun, with a little breeze flitting around. A few surfers are getting good rides, and one person has even persuaded a kite to take flight. I don't know how that was managed, but Rich points out the flag on the lifeguard tower that flutters encouragingly. Down where we are the air is still. Anna takes advantage of this to play her flute as Lorna sings along.
Various passersby stop to ask the usual questions. One family seems very interested, so I give them a quick free-piling demonstration and then show how to carve with a clamshell. No tools. Run what you brung. Tools just enable faster work with more detail, both of which can lead one down paths far from beauty.
6. Colors of the Sky
We have about 45 minutes of daylight left. Clouds near the horizon make that estimate even more questionable. I turn to Chris.
"I'd better start taking photographs." Wonderful yellow light floods the sculpture.
"You haven't done that already," Rich asks.
"Nope. Others have been doing so." He wanders off to talk with Lorna. I fetch my camera. If I could move I might do more creative angles, but as it is kneeling for low shots is a problem. It's real work to get back onto my feet, so sometimes I just shuffle around on already abraded knees.
"Are you sunburned?" Naomi Anna asks.
"No. Just crawling around in the sand."
A cloud blocks the sun and our light turns to cement. A few minutes later it's back, and then the sun's touching the horizon under the band of low dark offshore clouds. Above those is a sheet of silver that turns gold after the sun goes around Earth's curve. The gold deepens, darkens, turns reddish and gains purple fringes. And then something far to the west quenches the light, except up very high where some mare's tails still burn in the elevated day.
I do a last tool check, pick up the trailer's tow strap, and start walking. Chris and Eric push and we get over the dry sand quickly.
"That's the hardest part of the day. Thanks for your help."
"You're going home first, and then to the restaurant?"
"Yes."
"OK. We'll see you there."
"Chris, are you here on a bike?"
"No. I ran."
We head north along the sand-covered bike path. My tired legs push me along at a good pace for Chris to jog, and we talk as we go. I leave him at his apartment and struggle up the hill to home.
7. Meeting of Two Worlds
"Go left, then they're on the right," Chris says.
The instructions are too complex for me to figure out. I wander around, come back out again, go inside again and wander around some more. They shouldn't leave me alone in this state. And then I hear a recognizable voice and follow it to a big round table. Someone everyone has made it here faster than I did. Except for Larry, who had to haul his own equipment off the beach.
There are eight of us. Lorna and Rich I've known since 1995 when I did a slide show for the Sierra Club Camera Committee. Jane and Russ I met earlier than that, in 1992 or so, on various motorcycle rides. Naomi Anna has been coming out to the New Year Day sculptures for a few years. Larry I met in 1997 through Email prompted by sand sculpture questions; he moved out here last year so he could sculpt year round. And then Chris, met this year through Mosaic, the sole representative of that new world.
I have a foot in each world. I make an uneasy bridge, but today has been a success.
"How's the calamari?"
"I don't know because I don't like squid in general. Everything I've had here has been good, and everyone I've brought here has been pleased."
We pass around the menus, order, talk. I fade in and out, encouraged by a bottle of Negra Modelo.
"What is this, 'dos X X?'" Lorna asks, looking at the menu.
"Mexican beer. Light."
"Not bad, though."
"I prefer the Negra Modelo."
"Chris, what's your connection here?"
"Mosaic. I met Larry there a couple of months ago." Everyone here knows what Mosaic is because I've sent them the stories.
"You were right. The calamari is good." That's a relief. Of course, they were already hooked by the fresh tortillas. Conversations swirl around much faster than I can keep up with.
Each of our plates has a mystery vegetable. We sample and can't figure it out.
"Jicama."
"No. Turnip, maybe?"
"Could be. It has little flavor. Or rutabaga."
"You're kidding. Rutabagas have lots of flavor."
"So do turnips."
"You mean there's a difference? I thought a rutabaga was just sort of a big turnip."
"No, they're different."
A waiter comes by. I point and ask.
"Mexican squash."
"Oh, yes," Lorna says. "The kind that turns back in at the end."
"I've seen those."
Whatever it is, I like it. Of course, I'd like almost anything right now. Especially bed. We settle up and leave.
"Good night. Thanks for coming out."
"Happy new year!"
"Yes, indeed. A good start."
Chris and I walk across Lincoln and past the laundromat. If I stay with him I'm less likely to get lost. When he turns me loose I'm nearly home. I ride the rest of the way. All that's left is to wash the sand off. It feels like midnight but the clock says 1958. Tension will do that. Maybe sleep will bring some resolution. Probably not.
8. Afterward
At issue isn't so much one sand sculpture, but a process. The mistakes I made in this sculpture were similar to mistakes made a year ago. That's what interruption does: I forget, the hands forget. All the skills deteriorate. Design, carving, earthworks, integration. Being good at anything requires practice. The major gift of sand sculpture is that it doesn't feel like practice to me. It's always enjoyable, that simple act of carving a shape from packed sand.
Perhaps Phil (Mosaic, not Colorado State) had the right of it when he wrote, in response to my worries about doing a sculpture on Christmas day, "I think you could use it as an expression of worship for the Savior, not just on Christmas day, but year round. He is the creator of the universe and has given you the capacity to create. What a great expression of worship on Christmas. Expressions of faith through art is as old as art. Tolkein created the Lord of the Rings as an expression of his faith in Christ. A fantasy story as an expression of faith, and a good one at that. Sand sculpture seems pretty reasonable to me."
* * *
"Moses said to the Israelites, 'The Lord has chosen Bezalel, the son of Uri and grandson of Hur from the tribe of Judah. God has filled him with his power and given him skill, ability, and understanding for every kind of artistic work, for planning skillful designs and working them in gold, silver and bronze; for cutting jewels to be set; for carving wood; and for every other kind of artistic work.' Isn't that great?" Erwin asks. "The first man to be filled with God's Holy Spirit, and he's an ARTIST!" This was the last message for 2003, a potpourri of ideas and plans, with some history thrown into the usual lively mix.
I was encouraged by this until I realized the verses describe a man who's being tapped to help design and build the Temple in Jerusalem. His skills are very useful. More, I was thinking about the verse about serving two masters. Sand or God? Do I have a real choice, or is a choice even necessary? The verse actually reads "No one can serve two masters. For you will love one and hate the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."
There's nothing about money on the beach. Time, yes, but even in the middle of designing and carving I felt only the estrangement of an unresolved argument, not a severing of my connection with God. I know the difference.
I open the 2004 Tidelog and look for dates with good tides. They start in February and improve from there through the spring. What I need is God's blessing on this, not Mosaic's.
The first clear concept to emerge from the collision of Christian and beach experience is that talent is to be used. God gives people talents for reasons, and with talent comes responsibility I don't really want. Too bad, Larry. "Use it or lose it," I know. "Use it or disappoint God" is new.
Or could it just be that God likes sand sculpture? I wonder if Phil is right about creativity and worship. Well, if I get enough courage I'll ask God about this.
A second concept, not so clear, comes to mind. I'm all set up to fight God for my right to do sand sculpture, but has He ever opposed this? He gave no sign of being upset with the free-piled post-Mosaic sculptures.
9. On the Separation of Church and God
"Good morning, Lord."
It's still dark outside. Leftover rain drips regularly, metallically, in a neighbor's downspout.
I've given God other aspects of my life that I thought were more dear than sand sculpture, but it's becoming very apparent that I underestimated the sculpture's importance, and that of the church. Mosaic reanimated a nearly dead dream that had been sublimated for years in sand. Immediately after that the church pointed to the source of the dream and I hit the road, drawn irresistibly.
God is writing new life into my mismanaged life. I can actually think of a time soon to come when I can look forward to getting up in the morning.
Now, I'm not sure what the nature of that life will be. All I know is that God takes better care of me than I ever have. He knows how I'm made. I have a very strong desire to make things, preferrably beautiful and complex things with no limits of purpose or concept. As God replants the wasteland I have no idea what will grow. Sand sculpture is the biggest of the remnant few green spots amid the slag. I invented it, developed it, practiced it in sessions that didn't feel like practice, let my spirit fly off of its restricted ballistic course into places that otherwise couldn't be seen. It would hurt to lose this.
* * *
"Is not God the god of creation. Mine is, whether it has any existence outside my head or not. Therefore love god and do as you will, as the saint said (I don't remember which: you arethe expert on saints now). When you do, then whatever you want is what god wants.
Go and fret no more.
All the best,
Rich"
* * *
"Why do you think God would disapprove of sand sculpture?
I see no conflict at all. To be outdoors with natural things and to work creatively is spirituality of the highest order.
I have always felt more "spiritual" or "religious" when outdoors with creatures, plants, forests, sea, snow, etc.
You are on a good journey and doing well, as I see it.
Lorna"
* * *
"How'd the sculpture go?"
"Confused." Mauricio and I are sitting on his kitchen floor with all of his children's building blocks between us.
"How so?"
I pick up a tapered block and put it against another in the tower I'm building as I try to figure out what to say. Make it simple. Tell him the whole story.
"I hadn't thought about the design, as I usually do."
"Well, yes, you've had other things to think about."
"Right. Besides that I was arguing with God." He looks very attentive at that. "I was afraid he'd say 'No' if I asked him if I could do a sculpture. So, I didn't ask, and hoped he'd ignore me. You're probably very familiar with this."
"Oh, yes."
"So, there I am on the beach, sculpting. No judgement, but still no plan, and pretty much stone cold. I haven't done a big sculpture in months." I place another block, but this one unbalances the tower. It falls over and wipes out Amelia's elephant's legs. "I'm sorry, Amelia." We both start building again.
"The sculpture never really came together. There were nice elements. The important things happened after I got home, having gotten away with it; two thoughts. One, no judgement. Two, skills that are currently used in sand sculpture could be useful elsewhere, and maybe in something that satisfies me even more than carving sand does. Hard to imagine, but possible."
"Interesting." He gets up and walks toward the bedroom. "Oh, by the way, we have something for you." He hands me a big cylindric container of Tinkertoys.
"Wow. Thank you. I have just the use for this. I'm going to a birthday party tonight, and the Tinkertoys will fit perfectly." We go on building until I have to leave.
The sun has set, beyond Mt. Pinos, but long feathers of wind clouds glow reddish gold above Liebre Mountain against a darkening sky. The snow I'd seen on the way up is gone.
* * *
"Hi, Chris. Happy birthday!"
"Thank you. You brought pizza? Great!"
"The last time I did this I had them deliver it. Took two hours. So I picked it up on the way down." Balancing two pizzas on the handlbars as I rode through Marina del Rey. Other guests are wandering around with plates of food. I snag some chicken and head for the living room, needing a chance to sit down.
Andy sits down on the couch. "How was your new year?"
"Pretty good. I did the ninth annual sculpture."
"You do a sculpture for the New Year?"
"Yes. To celebrate the fact that I no longer live in Kansas and can go barefoot in January."
"How did it turn out?"
"Confused. Very tense." I tell him the story. "And so, it seems that God accepts my need to make sculptures. I'm not sure why."
"I can see ways to use it as a witness."
His ideas are more detailed than mine. I simply think that anything beautiful speaks of God. Not that all of my sculptures are beautiful--I'm running around one in twenty, these days--but the attempts count for something. Later we start building things out of Tinkertoys, and it's quite a sight to see. Adults playing, having fun making simple things designed on the spot. It's amazing what people can make when they sidestep the judgement.
I ride home through the cold damp sea air. The Venice Boardwalk is quiet, for once. The bike's tires whisper on the sandy smooth concrete. Slow. It has been a long couple of days.
2004 January 2, 3, 9
Edited and reformatted for the Web 2005 June 22
Bible references:
Leader: Matthew 15:14-29 condensed, New Living Translation
Afterward: Exodus 35:30-33, Good News Translation, and Matthew 6:24, GNT
Email from Rich Johnson, 2004 January 3
Email from Lorna McClellan, 2004 January 3
# © 1765 by Larry @ 
