In the early days of my sand sculpture adventures, while working on a big piece with lots of people, we usually ended up with a montage of many ideas as every sculptor tried to make a personal mark on the sculpture. The quality of work was also a montage as sculptors from many different skill levels were put side by side to work.
I always hoped that the sculpture would read as one thing and not just a collection of it's part but of course was guilty of the above; making my mark and being of questionable quality sculpture wise. Communicting with those around me to try and form some sort of flowing design could be quite difficult due to language barriers and the egos of the artists, myself included.
In the Danish projects in particular where the top was always architectural elements giving way, lower down, to everyone's individual style and conception. Most ended up as looking like decorated cakes but in the case of this one created in Falster, Denmark, I think it came together quite well.
No holes barred
Having such a big pile of sand to work with was inspiring and trying to give it an agreed upon composition equally so. With design meetings all being a bit double dutch I decided I wanted to try and make the biggest cut through ever and the team let me at it .
Making a hole so large in a sculpture this size wasn't really a done thing as it risked the entire piece. I had to be safe or very sorry but I was confident enough that I could pull it off.
I hit on the idea that if I made a composition inside the hole to give the sculpture support all would be safe as houses.
Another reason for wanting to make the hole was to give me some shelter from the awful weather and wind on the project. Giving myself a little cave to work in would be nice, although very dangerous. Having several tonnes of compacted sand fall on me is not how I wanted the story to end.
Structural engineering eat your heart out
The sand was pretty good actually and allowed me to go a bit crazy. You can maybe tell the whole top of the sculpture was resting on he figures. With sand you have to design in such a way that there will be supports to give the sands weight somewhere to go and with the two figures making complex arches I think it turned into a nice bit of engineering and a nice design element. It's all in the knees.
Once I carved my way out of the hole I worked down and added a few more element trying to make sense of the work around them.
Although the meaning of the whole piece is lost to me now I think it all came together quite well.
The sculpture took place as it was in the middle of nowhere and it was hard to find it's location to add this post to @steemitworldmap but with some clever photo analyses on my part I found it. It is interesting that in Denmark with sculpture projects like this there was the Philosophy that if you build it they will come and even though the weather was shite I heard that there we many visitors to the project on the southern point of Falster island.
Ps
Thanks for reading. I use Steemit to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice. This will hopefully give it a new life on the steem blockchain. I am doing them in chronological order so there are many more to come.
I'm back after a two week stint of sculpting sand all over Ireland. So I haven't been able to post for a while much less enjoy the posts being created during the Steem down turn. Now I am looking forward to a bit more time to be back in my workshop and documenting more ephemeral sculptures here. Below are some of my recent posts.
Atlantis with tentacles - sand sculpture
Apathy (Part 2 sculpting) - sand sculpture
Apathy (Part 1 Compacting)- sand sculpture
I hope you'll join me again soon.
@ammonite
Why that's some kind of art at itself.. really cool.. how amazing what you can create with sand only right? I love it, I hope to be able to enjoy something like this in real life too.. never seen such thing in real life, only on pictures lol.. thank you for sharing!
Have a great weekend!
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Hi @anouk.nok. Congratulations and being whale for a day and thank you so much for the vote. It was really appreciated.
Yes I work alot with sand and in the winter with snow and ice. Their are more and more projects around the world as ephemeral art grows in popularity so keep an eye out as there my be one near you.
Thanks again
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I'm assuming te cut-through is that hole at the top with the two figures inside? And that was big enough to fit you while you worked on that? That makes that thing a bit bigger than I thought it was XD And I'm trying to work out if death by sand would be an embarrassing way to go or "at least you died doing what you loved" XD
And how did you convince that thing to stay upright? The weather looks pretty blustery! It did come together really nicely though :)
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Yes a cut through is where you make a hole through the sand. It is always difficult to give sense of scale in a sand sculpture photo. Now I usually make sure a person is in the picture. The figures in the hole were a little smaller that life size.
There have been times when I have done quite dangerous stuff with sand but usually it is a calculated risk. But you just never know if the sand is going to fall until it's too late. The sand would for sure crush me if it fell but I lived to make another sculpture.
Danish sand in general is quite strong and is selected for this reason. If it did come down it would be more like blocks of soft clay.
Sometimes I am even surprised at how my sculptures stay up.
Thanks as always for you comments.
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Hiya, just swinging by to let you know that this post made the Honorable Mentions list in our daily Travel Digest. Please drop by to check out all the rest of today's great posts and consider upvoting the Travel Digest if you like what we're doing.
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Thank you so much guys and girls.
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I'm always so impressed by your elaborate work. And the sculptures always look more like they're made of concrete than sand.
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Thank you. As the sand dries out it becomes very strong like a sand stone. It is all in the way the sand is compacted. I have worked with cement also and will share these sculptures sometime.
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That's cool. Do the cement sculptures endure?
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Yes one I made in 2001 at it is still going strong. I will make a post about that one next.
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Can't wait!
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I don't have the patience to make something like this. My sand castles look like wet dunes with towers! Your sculptures are magnificent! Thanks for sharing.
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Thank you kindly. I've been lucky to be given the opportunity to learn.
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Congratulations, Your Post Has Been Added To The Steemit Worldmap!
Author link: http://steemitworldmap.com?author=ammonite
Post link: http://steemitworldmap.com?post=the-holey-demo-sand-sculpture
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Congratulations @ammonite! You have completed the following achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
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This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
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Hello @ammonite, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!
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