I ran into Timothy again on Friday. Venice Beach was newly levelled and smoothed by the scrapers, and he was reaching for the sky again with economical tosses of his shovel.
My first sand sculptures were done with the sand immediately to hand. I didn't know better, although I did have a bit of dawning impression that there were differences and finer sand seemed to work better. Where I worked in those early years, there wasn't much difference to detect.
In 1994, after a seven-year hiatus, I returned to sand sculpture. I sampled various places, looking for better sand. Note that I didn't really know what "better" meant in the context of sand. An impression in the hand, and how the pile felt while I was carving it.
The revolution came in steps that were nearly imperceptible until they reached a new point on the learning curve and I looked back and saw how everything had changed. I discovered fine sand, made better forms and custom carving tools. The size of sand grains makes a big difference. Starting early in 1996 I carried fine sand from low on the beach to a building site above the coming high tide. The resulting sculptures were more finely detailed, and a delight to carve.
Then I got the idea for multiple sculptures. These were intended at first for contests as a way to be seen on a large contest plot. Soon the idea took on its own life. Given that I was now making three sculptures in one day, I had to save energy by using native sand from the building area. The result, at the time, was disappointing. Coarse sand can't hold details, and the sculptures looked heavy. It all left a bad taste in my mouth, so the multiple era ended in early 2003.
Not until 2018 did I come to a new appreciation for these. I was going through my images for a slide show and gradually realized that many of the sculptures were beautiful. My first impressions had been shaped by fatigue and comparison with the more detailed sculptures of fine sand.
In the meantime I was mainly doing free-piled sculptures because I could just go for a walk, and, if there were good sand, sit down and make a sculpture with hands and a mussel shell. But I had to take a camera to satisfy friends, and there is a pocket on the camera bag that will hold a few small tools. The system worked well.
And then I met Timothy. He works above the high tide cusp. Native sand only. On a Friday we got to talking about making something side-by-side. I remembered, hazily, those old native-sand sculptures and, early the next morning, was on my way to Venice Beach with my cart.
Timothy is more por-active socially than I am on the beach, necessitated by the scale of his project. He gets noticed, being well beyond human scale. People stop and talk. The sun rose, the clouds sailed overhead. The indoor, television-driven gloom doesn't hold up out here where there are three men flinging sand and other people walking. People told us they were glad to see us out there, making stuff.
Mark does earthworks right at the tide line. Tim does his megalithic worship. I come in with my engineered equipment and make curving vertical structures. There's something for everyone in this exhibition, and we're dead center on the Venice Surf Cam. We made a lot of people happy.
Timothy hadn't worked hard enough on his own project, so he went into some earthworks on mine. A gift of defining space.
In the end, I said "I won't be here tomorrow. I'll be a wreck. And I have an event to do later."
"Whenever you can come back, that's fine."
Mark added his thanks. An amazing day. There was an echo of Rich Johnson in the whole process, a bubble of sanity and stability that we made on the beach.
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