Nothing deep or meaningful, just clean fun and games. That's what I remember most about this sculpture. Fergus Mulvany and i were asked to be part of a village arts festival in Terryglass county Tipperary and were asked to do something family friendly because I suppose Sand sculpture wasn't looked on as an art form and more something that was going to be a sideshow of the festival. We didn't mind and to be honest it took some of the pressure off. We were given a location outside the village on the banks of lough Derg, a pile of sand and left to our own devices. We were also given a nice river cruise boat to stay in just beside the sculpture. It was all quite idyllic.
Looking at our surrounding when we arrived the most impressive thing was the lough itself a long narrow lake in the Shannon river basin. The name itself is derived from the irish God 'Dagda' ie. Red Eye and has historic and mythological significance. So we thought it would be nice to add to this mythology by giving it its own lough Derg monster. Nothing too high brow in concept but he did have a high brow stretching to the back of his head. As I said just fun and games.
Fergus tackled the monsters head and I added an element of a little fairy on his back to give it an extra dynamic. Then continued on down to make the worm like body breaking the surface of the wavy water.
It was so nice to play all day and then sit on the deck of our boat drinking wine with our visiting friends overlooking our creation. It's jobs like this that remind me how lucky I have been to do what I do.
We didn't get much chance to see much of the rest of the festival because we were a bit away from the epicenter of the Real Art and had no transport, but we really didn't mind. We were happy in our own little world meeting the audience who came to see us.
One night we did go to a presentation where we were introduced and saw a talk given by a famous irish sports personality (neither of us had any interest in sport but to be fair Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh was very entertaining.)
The sculpture was what it was and we were happy enough to create it.
Ps
I think i'm fully recharged now. lets hope there are no more hiccups after HF20 and we can all get back to some kind of better normal. 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.
Asterix sand sculpture
Acorns - sand sculpture
Tranquil-sand sculpture
I hope you'll join me again soon.
@ammonite