After my Time Machine sculpture I was given a very special project to create. It was to be a piece dedicated to the well known sand sculptor Joe Maize, who had died the previous year. His family had sent some of his ashes to the event organisers and asked that they be given a resting place in one of the sculptures. It was a nice touch, to put a piece of him into the sand he loved so much.
When someone dies it is pretty normal to only say nice things about them and forget about all the bad stuff but for Joe I don't think that would be a fair assessment of the man. I didn't know him too well but from what I did know he was a troll. No, not the type that lives under a bridge stopping some Billygoatsgruff in their tracks or the online bullies that do battle with SJWs. I mean the type that was always winding people up and being a general pain in the ass. I short, I liked him. I'm sure most can agree under all that playing around he was a nice guy and he did great things for the popularity of sand sculpture.
Mourning Joe
Joe was from Hawaii and had been carving sand since the 1080's and probably before. Our paths crossed on lots of projects where he would always take the piss out of me for being Irish with constant name calling of Paddy or Mick and saying that an Irish cocktail was a pint of Guinness with a potatoes on the side. I always laughed it off but must admit he could be annoying at times and there was many a times when he went too far for some people.
His skills at sculpting were very evident and he always had a group of young sculptors around him eager to learn. What he was teaching was Architectural Disney type carving and so it was of no interest to me.
He died of cancer on the 28-8-06. The last time I saw him was in Brighton 2006 where he greeted me with a friendly hello and gave me a present of a tea-shirt from an Irish bar in Hawaii with a pint of Guinness on it. I knew there was something wrong. During the event he was sheepish and very kind. Or course he must have known the end was near and he was trying to right some wrongs.
I must say it was a honor to create a sculpture for him and I wanted to make it special.
Sunny side up
In keeping with the overall theme of the project which was Time Travel I decided to make a sun dial. I'm sure you get the idea and why I thought it would be a good fit. Time, because it was a clock and Travel, because it was moving, well the shadow was.
As another twist I thought it would be cool to base it on the solar system with the sun at it's center and then each of the planets showing the hours.
Solar system
I had originally thought that I should make to sun nice a smooth and so spent ages polishing its surface. Then a heavy rain shower hit and dappled all it surface. It looked more interesting so I helped the texture become more pronounced with a hose. The different layers of sand weathered at different rates and even though it looked more like Jupiter I liked the contrast.
It took a day to work out where each planet would be with Mercury being the first at 9 o'clock in the morning. Each of the others were carved when the shadow told me the right position all the way to 6 o'clock where I carved a hole to represent Pluto, Poor Pluto, getting demoted from planet status.
This image was taken at 9:38am based on the time stamp of the photo. You can see from the shadow it was pretty accurate as it marks just over half way between Mercury and Venus.
When it came time to put Joe's ashes in the sculpture we had a little ceremony. We all gathered round and I hollowed out planet earth. I poured him in and patched up the hole. At that moment the heavens opened up and it began lashing again. Everybody scattered and I stood by watching the sculptures surface get weathered away by the heavy drops. I could only laugh, knowing Joe was looking down, taking the piss out of me again.
Photo of Joe Maize: Charlie Beaulieu
I did repair the sculpture afterwards and gave it a good coat of screen to help it live on till the end of the exhibition. Joe is still missed to this day comes up in lots of conversations. Rogue or hero? Depends who you ask but he sure was one of the most interesting characters of sand sculpture.
Ps
Thanks for reading. I use Steem to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, amongst other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Steem blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.
The time machine - sand sculpture
Look to the past - sand sculpture
Musical Embrace - sand sculpture
