Zooming into the Future (March 15)

You walk the seashore and come upon ancient ruins. No people are left. The only evidence is their structures standing in windblown, sea-girt isolation. They'd been there. Where did they go? What was on their mind? The standard modern interpretation is "worship of the unknowable," but who really knows the mind of the disappeared sculptor?

Several times, walking Venice Beach, I'd come upon massive (truly) structures of heaped sand. Sometimes there was writing on smoothed areas around the base. Often there was a log on top. These could be seen from a long way off, in their splendid isolation on the morning beach. I approached, looked, found no clue in the footprints.

The 24-70 F/4 zoom I bought recently is said to have close-focus capability. I used to use a 60mm "Compact Macro" as my main walkaround lens. For the 8-megapixel 1D Mark II, it was fine. The 30-megapixel 5D Mark IV soon showed the lens' weakness, so I replaced it with the 100mm F/2.8 macro L. Magnificent lens, that one, and the stabilizer enables hand-held macro photography. Good reach, but hard to get a wider view, hence the new 24-70. But how good would it be? Let's go for a walk and find out.

I wouldn't know how well it performed until I got home. I'd read reviews and looked at samples. For years, while dithering on what to do.

The tide was low. There'd been flow out of the Rose Avenue major storm drain. I love the patterns left in sand by the flow of water, and the morning light produced great color and shadows.

 And then... I came up over the isthmus behind the Venice Breakwater and saw the megalith on the south curve below the big storm berm. Not only that, but there was someone moving around it, seeming to be centered on the towering mound.

No longer just an artifact left in mystery, it could be seen now as one man with a shovel bringing forth a vision with muscles and thought. There is an art to the use of a shovel. Use it well and your project goes up. Use it clumsily and your body fights you every step of the way. Like watching a good runner, watching a skilled shovel-user is fascinating. Every motion just so, with just enough energy to accomplish that little part of the task. You don't run a marathon as if it's a sprint. Turning a few shovelfuls in a garden isn't anything like moving three cubic yards of sand by hand.

And so I met Timothy, who comes to the beach just about every day to work on his project. Each day starts with the remnants of the day before and goes on from there.

This would be the last day for this particular build, he told me. The bulldozers were coming in the next week to level the storm berm. He was right; farther south the 'dozers were roaring in defiance of the sea as they did in hours what Neptune can do in minutes. A few days later I walked through Venice and saw them at work flattening the beach, pushing their puny blade-loads of sand. A tractor with a Fresno scraper smoothed out the grouser prints.

And Timothy was there, although I missed him that day. Farther north, defying the power of diesel and steel, standing against gravity and Beaches and Harbors with a shovel.

I went on my way south until the blather of bulldozers at the Venice Pier turned me back. There were more lovely patterns in the sand. Before too much longer I would see Timothy again, and worlds would collide. Megalithic determination met NASA-style engineering and, perhaps surprisingly, proved to get along just fine while others cowered indoors, watching the battlements for the viral invader.

 

20P-9 (March 7) A bit rushed

A couple of years ago, I bought a 100MM macro lens for my digital single-lens-reflex camera. I intended to use it for making sharp photos of sand, whose many beauties I'd discovered. That it has a built-in image stabilizer was a fact that didn't affect the decision to buy it.

I'm not as steady-handed as I used to be; I could hand-hold at a 15th of a second and get reasonable sharpness. Now, especially after sand sculpture... not really. So, one day I mounted the macro lens and used it to take some photos of a sculpture I'd already shot with the usual 24-70 zoom.

The difference was astonishing. I used the 100 macro for all subsequent sculptures.

But... the photographic tail was wagging the sculptural dog. That long lens required shooting at some distance, and pretty much precluded making multiple sculptures or even earthworks, even when shot horizontally to suit my Second Life image display device. I loved the sharpness, though, so stayed with it.

I did, however, start looking in two directions. One was a compact camera with stabilization, the other being a stabilized wide-angle lens for the big camera. After much dithering, the answer became "Yes." I bought a 24-70 F/4 zoom with stabilization, and a compact camera with stabilization and an electronic viewfinder. The latter was intended to come with me on walks when the big camera was too much to carry.

First up in testing was the zoom. I took it with me for this sculpture. I intended to do earthworks, and had a plan, but I allowed myself to be rushed. I was getting the sculpture in before a gig in Second Life, and I don't have a watch. The earthworks are rudimentary.

It's bean clam season. The sculpture was full of them. Not big, but still made carving a challenge.

On my way home, the post-sculptural dazed walk north along the beach with the low tide whispering on my left, I saw this clump of drying kelp under the very hard light. With the 100MM lens, I wouldn't have gotten the shot. Without stabilization, it would have been very blurry. The stabilized zoom worked very well. Not so sharp as the macro, but sharp enough that the GIMP's unsharp mask makes it look great on the big Second Life display. This shot is unsharpened, except in the effect of being scaled. I love the colors in this.

20P-8 (March 4) Might have had one ball too many...

The tide window opened on Tuesday, but the morning was dry and windy. I bagged the plan.

Wednesday was much better. Calm, cool. Would there be sand?

I had two new tools. One was a modified cake decorating spatula; I'd given it some taper, and sharpened the edges. The other was a good-sized clam shell, sturdy, for making earthworks. It was small enough to fit in the camera bag.

The sand was decent, much like what I've had this year. The pile ended up having an elongated plan, which became part of the design. With a start time of around 9 AM there was no lack of time.

I worked carefully, but not as slowly as I thought. Carving was done in about two hours.

The shell was much too small to work in making the earthworks I'd intended. I bagged that idea and started making balls.

The shelf up near the top seemed to call for a ball, and reminded me of the sculpture I made in 1996 which had little shelves carved in to hold balls. I was thinking of it from the south point of view. When I got around to the east, I realized it was about as anthropomorphic a sculpture as I've ever made. Felidomorphic, yes, but never anthro-. Well, mostly. Unintended here, but I liked it even if it does come close to violating my non-representational  sculpture contract.

I like this one, from all angles. The new spatula worked well on the larger surfaces. I replaced the clam shell with a bigger one that should make earthworks possible. I'm also thinking about a new kind of tool for that. We'll see.

The "Burning Sandwoman" image, reminiscent of the Burning Man effigy and the Lamplighters' Lantern Man they have at the Village. I've felt for a long time that sand sculpture is partly a dance, but seldom have I made a sculpture that dances this nicely itself.

20P-7 (Febrary 24) Where did the week go?

Intending to go for a walk on the beach, I looked at the tide chart and noticed the tide going down in the early afternoon. How could the window still be open? I did a sculpture two weeks ago!

I have become involved in many projects in Second Life. Most of these involve writing and performing. Time becomes fluid when doing those, and February 20, when I did the last sculpture, felt like a long time ago. On my way to the beach, camera slung over my shoulder, I realized it was just four days back.

There was construction going on behind the Breakwater, with all its attendant noise and stink. I was tempted to bail, but the sand was better than expected so I started building. The process was a bit rushed by not wanting to be around all the machinery, and my mind wasn't on the sculpture. It developed some default designs.

Later I realized... no, it's not state of the art, but it was done in two hours. Start to finish. Not that long ago, a sculpture like this would have taken much longer... and before that, it would have been impossible. So, a good day. The earthworks are desultory, as I didn't have a good scooping tool like a big Pismo clam shell.

20P-6 (February 20)

After a season of writing poems and working on a longer story, I needed to do some sculpture. Winter brings unreliable weather, so I went lightweight with just the camera bag with some small tools. This day turned out to be very nice, although the sand wasn't quite what I'd hoped for.

The design is a continuation of what I did in 20P-5. I wanted these not to look like they'd started as free-pile sculptures.

20P-5 (February 6)

The tide window opened, and the weather had been disappointingly calm and clear. That's no guarantee, but an earlier walk on the Santa Monica beach had shown me decent sand there. I miss walking in the rain, but storms do remove the sand. Trade-offs. I decided to go make a sculpture.

The sand was an odd mix of fine and medium that felt finer than it acted. Water drained out fast. I had to work very fast in piling to keep everything together, and the pile was relatively narrow and short.

I had this idea for a plan based on a rounded triangle. The sand was good enough to hold edges if I were careful. Then I wanted the spaces to work with the edges.

I also wanted to hide the sculpture's free-piled origin. The only sign of that left is the taper. The long hollow curve in there because I liked the way it felt, and looked.

The flat top didn't contribute much, so after a round of photos I made some small balls as a finial.

20P-4 (January 24) Compromises

Free-piled sculpture comes from a set of compromises different from that for formed sculpture. There is less equipment involved so it's easier to get one off, but the actual carving is more limited. Sharp edges and thin sections are nearly impossible.

But... what if we rethink the process so that a sculpture is less dependent upon those kinds of design cues? For this one, I tried some more subtle curves and hollows.