Terraform - sand sculpture

I grew up on the outskirts of Dublin just on the other side of a river which marked the city and county line, It was a little village with tree lined roads running for a mile in each direction before you came to any other major development. Out our front window you could see all the way across farmland to the Irish sea which was around 2 miles away and we spent our childhood playing in the forest and fields. It was all quite idyllic but, I knew it couldn't last. Now my family home is surrounded by development, the tree lined roads are now lined with walls and building all the way into the city and the view out the window is looking straight into a five story apartment block across the road. Our house sits like that little house in the movie up (great movie)

They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot

We are strange creatures, us humans. We really love straight edges and making boxes. The rest of the animal kingdom must be wondering what's wrong with us. I don't see it anywhere else in nature. We simply love to terraform and make order of the chaos by slabbing everything with cement and building boxes to bury the nature that we are part of with not a care for the others we share the earth with.

This isn't supposed to be an environmental post, I'm sure most people are sick of hearing how much we are fecking up the world but, it is true, that we really don't seem to appreciate the planet the way we found it and are doing everything we can to conform it to our vision of how it should be. If we are not careful it may be to late, As Joni Mitchell sang ' you don't know what you've got till it's gone'..

Doubling up

This sand sculpture was made for the doubles competition at the 2006 Harrison Hotsprings event in Canada. I themed up with Edith Van Der Wetering and we decided we would do something based on this theme.

It was quite a simple piece in concept with two landscape elements interacting. One being nature and the other our man made creation.

We split the piece in two so that we could each work and not be in each others way. While Edith made her picturesque landscape I tackled the human aspect. We had decided that it should be some sort of conflict between the two and so wanted to personify the land.

You will be assimilated

I made my side with a rocky like texture to give contrast to her rolling hills. Obviously my side was the aggressor and giving it more dark shadows added to its character. He appeared to be rising up and and over the other side like an oppressive force.Where they met my side had hers in an apparent headlock as it pummeled it into submission.
Making them look in some way human helped the idea read better and we kept it subtle to still be quite abstract.

On the back of my land I made a cityscape rising with the earth like it was an unstoppable tidal wave going to destroy anything in it's path.

I liked the piece very much especially the way it just seemed to form straight out of the beach. Using the negative space where we had dug sand from added to this effect.
As a team we worked very well together. Each trusting the other to connect with good interaction in the center, our different styles of carving complimenting and giving a visual balance.

I really don't know if anyone got the meaning of the piece because as you can see in the background many of the other sculptures were sand castles and our piece was maybe a bit too far out and would take a bit more time to dissect but, I was happy that the piece had some sort of message.

Ps

Thanks for reading. I use Steem to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, among other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Steem blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.