Muck Baby nativity - sand sculpture

This is the last sculpture I made in 2004 and again it was for the Christmas season. The project in La Pineda, Catalonia had been going for five years at this point and we had started to enjoy thinking of new creative ways of making it different each year. Making a tradition crib would have felt too much like work so trying to inject different compositions and sub themes into the mix helped us make it into one of the most unusual sand nativities around the Mediterranean.

For this year we wanted the whole thing to be relief carving with each element looking like it was a plate pushed out from a background.

We had three main curved walls and I worked on a scene where Joseph was leading a heavily pregnant Mary on a horse looking for somewhere to give birth. It was a simple enough composition but wanting to give it as much relief possible while staying within the self imposed brief had it's challenges.

You can see from this side view that the surface detail was quite thin and that the sides of the panels were like they were extruded from the deeper layers.
I made four layers in all, trying to keep it a simple as possible. Incorporating a fish eye lens effect perspective on the houses gave it a bit more movement and sense of direction.
The sand was full of rocks and clay which made it another challenge to add in detail and give the surface a nice finish but I think it all worked out Ok.

On one of the other three walls was a Shepard and sheep. This was made by Fergus Mulvany and Kirsten Anderson. I actually think this was the nicest area where the effect we were going for worked best. Keeping it simple and graphic was the best approach.

In front of this area the Carganer made his appearance. I wrote more about the history of this shitting crib figure in another post which you can read about here.

On the last outside wall were the three kings. Sorry about the ropes in the picture but we usually add these to keep the audience in line and stop them touching our work.

On the other side of the walls we had three angles flying in a circle around our center piece. This one was made by Anique Kuizenga.

And this by Ludo Roders. Again simple works best and Ludo's style was perfect for this.

In the very center was the baby Jesus himself in a little nest. Wilfred Stijger aka @stijgerart made this and he decided to use all the clay/ muck he could gather which we took out of the other sculptures to make the baby. I liked the fact that he used this material. Although it wasn't sand it was what we had to work with. Sometimes it is better to not fight with the material you have and use it to do something creative.

Not the most beautiful nativity in the world and I don't really feel like I was jamming writing this post either, so sorry for that but, this is the last from 2004 and my next one has a bit more of a story behind it.

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Ps

Thanks for reading. I use Steem to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, among other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Steem blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.

Follow the star - sand sculpture

Follow the Star - ice sculpture

Two rooms with a view- ice sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon
@ammonite