For our third year in La Pineda, Catalonia (Don't say Spain, they don't like that) we made a sculpture which was quite different from the usual sand nativities which happen in many areas around the Mediterranean.
Instead of making a crib and characters we played with different scales and showed other parts of the story of what surrounded jesusssssss' birth.
The composition was quite interesting in that it was very much a sculpture you had to walk all the way around to get the full picture. Trying to take a photo to show it all was just not possible. This is what I think good sculptures look like in photos ie. not giving the whole picture. Sculpture is 3d after all.
I'm Sorry about the quality of my images, I shot these with the photo function on my video camera which is apparently not very good.
Making it large
At the center was a large baby carved nicely by @stijgerart , surrounded by two large hands made by Peter Busch and myself. It was nice to be able to work so big but a challenge to keep both hands the same scale and likeness. I think they worked out quite nice also.
On the outside we had relief carving depicting Mary and Joseph making their way to Bethlehem with the Angel showing the way.
On the other were the three kings making their journey with the blingy gifts.
This experimenting with a new approach to making a crib would begin a challenge we set for ourselves each year. To come up with a different composition and try to make the sculpture fresh for us to work on and for the viewers to never know what to expect.
La Pineda has many of the same visitors each year and we want to make it interesting for them. Seeing the same old Classical crib would be boring and something that any sand sculptor could do but with a team like the one we have there we want to add another dimension.
Public service announcement
I will be flying to Spain, sorry Catalonia on tomorrow for another Installment. Each day I will post a progress blog and resume normal posting when I get back. Even though Steem isn't doing too well at the moment I will keep on posting and hopefully increase my Steem power for when the bulls return. Thanks to everyone who is still actively posting and developing in these tough times.
Adios Amigos or as the Catalans say adéu amics.
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.
Tantalus - ice sculpture (remastered)
2001 a nativity odyssey begins - sand sculpture
A very brief history of sculpture - sand sculpture
I hope you'll join me again soon.
@ammonite