Character Building - sand sculpture

After the 2008 financial collapse, Ireland was in pretty much the same way as the rest of the world. Our government bailed out those who caused it and brought in terrible austerity on the serfs. It was a tough time unless of course, you were a banker or had lots of money to weather the storm. We all felt it, it was a dark time with not much hope for the future. But, then the future became the present and together we got through it and then we woke up one morning and forgot it ever happened.

It is one of the interesting things about being human. We learn to accept our lot in life and as long as we have our health and a good network around us we can somehow manage to trudge through each day no matter what crap is thrown in our way.

Did we learn from the last crisis how to make sure it never happened again? Not on your Nelly. We got right back to inflating other bubbles. But it is this getting back up and pulling yourself together again that I wanted to explore in this sculpture.

Me, me, me, me , Me!

I wanted to make a big self-portrait to put myself front and centre in the story. How did all this make me feel? How did I cope? The idea that we had just come through a time when in all honesty we couldn't just blame the banks and the politicians. They really just enabled our downfall. The debt-based economy was wonderful, we spent like there was no tomorrow. How were they to know that there actually wouldn't be? We were being told that things would just continue to get better and better. For me personally I never really had much to lose. As an artist, all you can really hope for is that your incomings match your outgoings at the best of times. That was my life during the good times and I was happy with my lot. I loved my job and had some wonderful family and friends around me. My life was pretty good all-round, I didn't have debt and so I felt a bit removed from the society that I lived in.

Of course, when the shit did hit the fan I too found myself in the crosshairs. I needed to reevaluate. Work wasn't as forthcoming as before and the cost of living was rising.

For me, even though I was knocked down I got myself back up and put back together and the things that really helped me were the simple things that had kept me grounded during the inflated times. The love of the simple things life, friends and living in a beautiful country. The funny thing was that I really noticed a change in the people as they became kinder. The rat race was over. We were all in this boat up shits creek together and we all needed to paddle together.

With a little help from my friends

My sculpture had several figures around it representing the good sides of the Irish. Like they had come out of the earth to help each other rebuild.
The big head was made up of lots of puzzle pieces just like my own head and some of those pieces are missing (as you can probably tell) but the soul of the people was coming together to reassemble my broken mind.

As a portrait, I was quite happy with the result. It did have a resemblance although the nose should have been much bigger. I didn't want to undercut it too much or it would have risked the whole this falling off destroying my beauty. It seems that these things can stay attached if they are made of flesh and cartilage but I wasn't too sure with sand.

I've mentioned before that sand sculpture is as much engineering as it is sculpting so I needed to be careful not to let my bulbous head be too undercut and that meant making it a bit fatter around the check area for support.

The grounded spirits doubled as support for my very big cheeks and rugged yaw.

I was happy with my personal approach within our theme of 'The Bright Side' which we had set ourselves for the 2013 Dublin castle sand sculpture Exhibition. We had chosen that theme to be a boost to the Irish psyche. The country was in the toilet but we wanted to sow the seeds of positivity. Sure, look at the bright side, we'll all get through this if you help each other out. I am not sure if the audience got my message by looking at my ugly mug with strange creatures coming up out of the ground to rebuild it but that was my concept, for better or worse. I also liked the way it just sat there staring at the visitors creating an imposing presence.