Apathy (Part 1 Compacting) - sand sculpture

This is going to be part 1 of a 2 part mini series documenting our first Irish sand sculpture exhibition in the historic upper courtyard of Dublin castle . I broke it into two because while looking through my photos I realised that I had a collection of images which showed the process of how a sand sculpture is prepared for carving. I've never really wrote about this part of the process before so some of you may be interested. Also, it may be a useful post to send people to in the future. Part 2 will talk about the actual sculpture.

Introducing sand sculpture to the emerald isle

Niall, Fergus and I had been carving sand around the world for a few years at this point and hoped that we could emulate the success we had seen aboard here in Dublin. Irelanders ('The Irish' as they like to be called) had never really seen this type of work before except on beaches while on holidays where around the Mediterranean buskers make a small sculpture and put their hat out for some coinage.

We wanted to do something to show that you could also have a message behind your work and that it could in fact be a material with which to create art.

In those days of course trying to get any money from the Arts Council or anyone else for that matter to put on an art project would have meant lots of Harvey Weinsteining. Needless to say we didn't get any funding... It wasn't from lack of trying.

So, Fergus, Niall and myself each put in £1000 or €1270 (We changed over to euro this year) and decided to fund ourselves

Location, location ,location

Finding the right spot was our first challenge. It needed to be central, secure and with a good footfall of passers by. We didn't have much money so couldn't be paying security or for advertisements. Dublin Castle at the time was rarely visited by Dublin people. It's main claim to fame were tribunals of inquiry into corrupt politicians and the main base of the dreaded tax man. Meaning it wasn't a very popular days outing for citizens.

Luckily for us the Guy in charge of events in the castle was the coolest guy we had ever met. After a short meeting where we told Tommy what we would like to do he said yes with no hesitation. Anything to shake shit up in the castle would be a good thing. We got a feeling that he as a civil servant was tired of being civil and the idea of seeing something new around the castle could only be a good thing. He did however say that he would have to charge us €1 euro for the use of the court yard to keep everything legal..... I don't think we ever actually handed over the money.

Protection racket

We were free to do whatever we wanted as long as everything was cleared away a month later. Our only spanner in the works was insurance. A couple of days before we were about to start we got word from some uncivil servant that we would need insurance or we would have to cancel. Trying to get a quote to make a sand sculpture seemed impossible so we had to go back to our friend Tommy and tell him the news. He was the sort of guy that hated this crap as much as we did so, rather than make us cancel he offered to extend the castles insurance around us for any public liability although we had to sign a waiver that we ourselves were not covered. He was a true gentleman in a system full of pen pushers.

Now with all our ducks in a row we set to work.

Montage

Imagine if you will an eighties movie were the heroes have to get something done which would take time and not make for the most entertaining movie watching experience. That's why they invented the montage. Strike up the music and let me take you through the process before I take over the whole steem blockchain with this post.

Forms

Having gotten our wood we set about making the form structure to give us something to compact the sand into. Here's Fergus hammering in some screws.

Niall thought it better we use a screw driver and started to turn his device round and round. I suggested he press the trigger and we started to make some headway.

Forms finished, Yes, they were a thing of beauty. My gas powered bike would be a project for another day.

Sand

Dumping several loads of sand in the courtyard led to some raised eyebrowses. One Journalist even ran a story on it in the Irish Times . (Name redacted from the article as it appears online now but I believe it was Victoria White) original .
Spinning newspaper flying towards Camera

'You read it here first: Dublin City Council decided on Monday to spend €35,000 building an enormous mound of sand in front of Dublin Castle in the early summer.

That's the kind of information you miss if you don't pay attention to the council's role as a small but not insignificant arts-funding agency. Ah, it's art. That explains it. The "sand sculpture" will be the work of the Duthain Dealbh group and is a new venture for the council,

She will go down as one of the inventors of Fake news. I don't know where she got her info but we for sure didn't get €35,000.

A new toy arrives to help on the job. we'd never driven one before so Like in the 'Matrix' downloaded the knowledge from the internet straight to our brains.

Compacting

Like giant kids sand boxes we assembled our forms and layer by layer with lots of water mixed the sand to the right consistence. Each layer around 8 inches.

Then using Mechanical whackers compacted the sand into a solid block. The teleport made for a great camera jib.

As work continued some of us took a break to think of a master plan.

Form by form were filled with sand. Getting smaller as they went up.

Done. The pagoda looking structure was now filled with compacted sand. Passers by were very curious. One old woman asked what it was and we told her a sand sculpture to which she replied ' Well, it's shite!' and walked off. You've gotta love Dubliners.

Now the easy part

A few days later, so that the excess water could drain from the sand we began by removing the the wooden boxes and carving the block of sand within.

That's all for now. (Thank God says you.) Well, at least you now know how a sand sculpture is prepared. Join me in part two of this epic 2 part series to see what it turned into.

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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 blockchain. I am doing them in chronological order so there are many more to come.

Reflections of a mermaid - sand sculpture

Dr. Snow and the attack of the greedy cibe - snow sculpture

Abu Simbel - sand sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon.
@ammonite

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