One Day, One Man, One Beach: 11F-4, January 13

Late in 2010 I put new wheels on my sand cart so I could make formed sculptures. The advantage is that the sand can be filtered to remove shells and rocks. When the sand is clean free-piling is fun but formed is more versatile. The restriction is that the shape of the pile is always a cylinder. Trade-offs.

And, also by this time, various friends had prevailed upon me to start taking a camera with me. For formed sculptures it's not so bad. I have the cart to shoulder the load.

I wrote no formal report about this, but I did send a note to a friend in Emai.

"Shortcutting here because I'm about done in. Yes... I'd been thinking about flowers, and at first thought about making something like a tulip. That would have ended up being symmetric, or nearly so, and also repetitive, at least in the image I had in mind. So, I changed course, and decided to make a deep V that would have light-admitting slots cut into it. I made the V part, but then realized I'd never be able to get at the other side of it; there would have to be some sort of structure to hold it all up. What you see in the second image is all that's left of that idea... and, looked at in a certain way, is quite flower-like, and that led to the title.
"The day was beautiful. Very little wind, calm surf, just some thin wispy cloudes that are proably outriders of the system that's making you wet. The people who came by were the usual winter ones... calm, just hanging out on a nce day. I got a CD of music from one fellow who's a musician, among other things. He wants to do some performannce featuring music and sand sculpture. We'll see.
"The thin leg you commented on ended up thin because it occupies the space between two ideas that didn't talk with each other quite enough. One idea was the tucked-in outside, and the other idea was the big space. Fortunately,. the sand was good enough to stand the strain of the conflict. <G> It is somewhat thicker than it looks, and there's enough structure at the top to attach things that might otherwise be leaning too hard on that leg."

CJ, a Venice blogger, happened to be walking the beach in the morning. Here's a link to her story, which has additional images.
Blogtown by CJ, "Free-form Sand Sculpture"

11F-4, "Blossom"