Let me take you back to where it all began. This strange begging robot thing was the first sand sculpture I ever made. All the way back in 1996. It was made by Fergus Mulvany, Niall Magee and myself outside the Parliament building in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The week I left art college I was asked would I be interested in going along with my friends Fergus and Niall to be part of Denmark's first International sand sculpture exhibition. I had nothing else planned for my future, so thought. 'What the heck'. I just needed to get a plane ticket and everything else would be taken care of. I applied for a thing called an 'Arts flight' which was a grant run by the arts council of Ireland and Aerlingus . I was successful .
Fergus and Niall had carved sand a few times before in Holland and assured me it would be great fun. On arriving in Copenhagen we were pick up by our, soon to be good friend Martin Tilinius(who sadly died last year) and were brought straight to the center and put to work.
False start
I really hadn't a clue what we were doing as the plan changed from minute to minute. 'The sand is useless' I was told by my colleagues and as piece by piece our sculpture fell apart I tended to agree. What started out as a futuristic version of Rodins -The Thinker became a one armed begging robot on tracks. The wind in the Plaza also didn't help. The sand and details continually dried out and blew away. We tried to somehow seal the surface with a mix of PVA and water but sill the sculpture was destined to failure and when we were asked to go to the second larger sculpture this one was quickly destroyed and redone by other with a bit more experience.
Take two
Onto the beach we went and had a bit more success. We were joined by around 20 other sculptors from all over the world and set to work creating this futuristic montage of nonsense. I still can't understand why I, with almost no experience was sent to the top to work right beside the Godfather of sand sculpture himself Gerry Kirk, an American from San Diego. He had been making sand sculptures since the 70's and had in lots of ways set the ground work for how sand sculptures would be made to this day. It was an honor to see what he could do but also very intimidating to try and make something which didn't look like complete crap beside his skillful creations.
I persevered and was quite proud of the result. I carved with safety my main concern, not wanting to have any repeat of my first experience on my side. I just made things up as I went along, which seemed like to way most people were working. It was just lots of very thin relief forms with no rhyme or reason. I did stick in a kind of ammonite. This is something I have always been fascinated by (hence my user name on Steemit).
Overall it was a great experience and I was hooked. It was great to be outside creating for fun and meeting all these amazing people, many of which are still carving today and making many long lasting friendships.
The sand sculpting itself was also nice. To be able to make things so fast in such a common place material amazed me and I felt it had great potential for the future.
There was already talk at that point of other sand projects going on the next year and I tried my best to impress and show that I was very interested. I just hoped that at the next project the sand would allow me to be a bit more adventurous.
Ps
With so many posts on Steemit and so little time thank you so much reading this far. Not all of the sculptures I will blog about are my favourite or proudest works but each has a story and I want people to see my work warts and all. It would be great if you can resteem any you like so they get more eyeball on them and If you have any comments I would love to interact.
I hope it is OK the use the Introduceyourself tag on this post. If you feel I am wrong to do so let me know in the comments and I'll remove it.
To check out some of my latest post click the images below.
Tantalus -Ice & snow sculpture
Renaissance - sand sculpture
Gulliver- sand sculpture
Poles Apart - video
