There was an ulterior motive for the organisers of this project to invite me. They asked that while I was making a sculpture could I also throw together a documentary of the event for promotional purposes. Now, any of you who know anything about film making will know that a documentary is not something you just 'throw together'. It takes planning and lots of time to get the right shots for the story you hope to form.
Having to do both at the same time would be a challenge but you know me, in for a penny in for a pound.
Of course I would have preferred just one roll on the event and knew that spreading myself so thin would require one of the projects to suffer, in this case it was the sculpture. I'll see if I can share the video later to see if you think the sculptures failings were worth it.
Fun in the sun
The venue was the seaside town of Vinaros, Catalonia. Not too far south of Barcelona. I was very happy to go to the project as it was small group of some of my favorite carvers. During pound up (compacting the sand) I began work on the documentary also and shot some nice action scenes. Then back to work on my own sculpture. I didn't compact a massive block as the heat was pretty wild and sapped all my energy the filming was also much more fun, I was given a helper who was a young local girl that was very eager to shovel and work on her tan which I found quite distracting to say the least. Having spent the day compacting and videoing what I could we retired and I tried to think of what to make.
An idea formed of a figure pushing through a wall of blocks. It had no real meaning, I just thought that it might be interesting to make something figurative and abstract.
The figure itself wasn't too great. The pose was stiff and I was forced to give her thicker legs than were natural, to support her weight. I think I made her head too big the begin with, my mind wasn't really in the game as I chopped and changed from sculptor to documentary maker. Truth be told I was enjoying the filming more that the sculpting.
The wall that the character was trying to break through was a collection of stacked blocks with only the ones she pressed against moving. On the other side I tried to keep the form that she created. I actually liked the idea and may do something else with it some day,
Stroke of genius
One idea I had while I was working was wouldn't it be cool to have one of those pin box things but as front door to your house. When you have a visitor all they have to do is push themselves into the pins and you could see who it was on the other side. You would have no need for a peep hole or security camera. Brilliant!. Your visitors would probably have to remove their clothes to make it work correctly but that is a small price to pay to gain entry... to my house anyway.
That reminds me, I must add inventor to my resume
source
Hidden
At the other side of the sculpture I carved the sand I had left over into a big sheet held up by hands so that it could catch the blocks as they came through. It was a quick solution in-fitting with the sculpture but it was also like I was just sweeping all of the loose sand under to rug to hid it, which is what it actually was.
As a sculpture it had a few elements that I liked but overall it just didn't gel together. I seemed that I got too tied up in the details and forget about the bigger picture. Still worthy of documenting, as you never know what it may inspire down the road. I thought the documentary came together quite nice and really gave a sense of how it is to be a sand sculptor because it was from my point of view, I have seen other documentaries on sand sculptor but they don't seem to portray what it is all about. I hope I can upload it to DTube even though I did a very silly thing and followed the organisers suggestion in using music which we didn't have the permission to use. We'll see.
I enjoyed filming the other sculptors at work and doing the few interviews. It is interesting for me to see the way they cut and molded the sand into the forms they are trying to make and how it is so different to me. I could see why they are some of my favorite sculptors and maybe I might even steal some of their techniques now that I can analyse it frame by frame.
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.
The sculptor's studio - sand sculpture
Terraform - sand sculpture
The Five Senses - sand sculpture- timelapse
I hope you'll join me again soon
@ammonite