Remember when you were young, all you wanted was to be like the older boys and girls but slowly and surely as you got older that reversed and you wished to be younger. I don't know when that change over happened for me but, I know i'm way passed it.
This phenomena was the bases of our team sculpture at the 2004 Harrison Hot Spring competition.
Last time I showed a sculpture Niall Magee and myself made as part of our doubles competition. Suffering a major collapse the night before judging left us as an 'also ran'. Now we were on to the bigger competition and joined by Hanneke Supply from Belgium and Ludo Roders, Edith Van Der Wetering and Jeron Meijer from Holland.
Even hard boiled eggs need to be cracked
In Harrison compacting the sand was part of the competition time and you would think that having a team made up of weedy Irish guys and some attractive European ladies and hunk would reduce how much sand we shifted. But those girls are ripped. Throwing shovel after shovel of sand high into the air was no problem to them. Niall and I just looked on in wonder. Hold on a second... That was a dream. We all worked very hard, in sand sculpture there is no gender difference and the twinging of pain I developed in my shoulder signaled that I had pushed myself too hard. When finished we had compacted three big blocks standing nearly 3 meters tall.
A second false start
Due to competition time still moving along we had to remove the wooden forms almost immediately and get to sculpting. But, Low and behold each of the two side ones cracked and fell to the ground when the wood was removed. Not the best start I must admit. So, rather than crying over spilled milk we quickly readjusted our design and worked with what we had left.
Stuck in the middle
Niall and I worked on the center while the others did the two fallen side areas. I forget now what we hoped to do originally but I think it was a similar concept. In the center there were an old and young character looking through a mirror with their heads intersecting the other one's body. I'm pretty sure that was my idea and the reason why I was making it.
On the side walls there were many faces showing the emotions of what that past or future that the men in the mirror were nostalgic for. Wait a second...can you be nostalgic for the future? well hopefully you get the idea.
Overall the piece turned out very unusual and kind of abstract but I do think people got what we were trying to hint at especially with our title in place. The American carvers seemed quite impressed at what we had achieved especially with the disastrous collapses at the start. The piece really stood out from all of the castles and cartoony sculptures along the beach.
Of course there were many that didn't know what to think of it and I also liked that fact, that the viewer had to actually think about what they were looking at. Harrison in general had always been too illustrative for my liking like the Macdonalds of sand sculpture. No disrespect, I just really believe that sand sculpture can be much more.
In the heel of the hunt we were given fourth place in the competition. As I've said before winning or losing doesn't bother me one way or the other but it was nice that our weird style of sculpting had made an impression on Harrison Hot Springs and the predominantly North Americans carvers.
Niall, Hanneke and myself had planes to catch. We were going straight to our next adventure, this time in China. Tune in next time to read more.
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.
Mirror mirror - sand sculpture
Duncannon miniature - sand sculpture
The Martyr - sand sculpture
I hope you'll join me again soon
@ammonite