Nina Sowmoan - sand sculpture
There are some sculptures I will share with you that are not my proudest moments. This is one such one. However, I want to document them all and behind every sculpture is a story and a lesson learned. With Nina Sowmaon (get it?) I learnt about Sculptural Darwinism.
Fergus Mulvany and myself were invited to De Spelerij In the Netherlands to make animal sculptures in this great family fun park. I wrote about it before in my other posts, (Links below). This is the first sculpture we did and as we learned to use this new sand with lots of clay and peddles we encountered a problem.
Truncated
What started as an elephant rolling his trunk became something quite different and silly fun.
The trunk was carved and it was time to move down to the head and body. The amount of clay in the sand made the trunk too soft and it collapsed under it's own weight. We saw cracks appear first and slowly open. Below is a shot of the proceedings.
We were left with a stump and as we usually do in these situations we stood back, thought should we begin again, or see if what we had left inspired ideas. With the already roughed out head and what was left of the trunk it was immediately clear that the sculpture wanted to be a pig after all, so we got to work making its wish our command.
I was quite amazed that there was such a simple solution to the problem. A bit of a nip and tuck to the ears and it was almost done. If Darwin himself was looking on he could have added it as a chapter to his book. Saying that this was the evidence he needed to prove that pigs evolved from Elephants. Ok, maybe not.
Like a pig in shite
Now all bets were off and we decided to just have fun with our little piggy. Because the head was in such an un-pig like pose we thought it looked like it was singing. This brought us in aother new direction. Make he a she, slap a microphone in her hooves and the rest of the story pretty much wrote itself, name included.
When finished we went on to carve the Apes , also Linked below.
Ps
I know that wasn't a great sculpture but please bare with me as I try to document all my work good and bad. Nina hasn't seen the light of day since I took these pictures all those years ago. She just wants to be remembered for what she was, a twig on the evolutionary tree of my work. Next time I will root out something a bit more impressive (I hope) so please visit my blog again. For now here are some of my recent posts.
Other De Spelerij Sculptures
Biggles - sand sculpture
Long live the apes -sand sculpture
Gamer - sand sculpture
CCTV - sand sculpture
Hope to see you soon
@ammonite
[//]:# (!steemitworldmap 52.057697 lat 6.080613 long Nina Sowmoan - sand sculpture 1999 d3scr)
From behind she looks like a boss in World of Warcraft.
Any resemblance to a person living or dead is coincidental. Her name was also changed to protect the innocent.
I love the gamer. They're funny your sculptures. I really like them. I saw a great sand sculpture of Theresa May at Glastonbury festival this year. Are there many people making sandsculptures ? Is it a big scene?
Actually it is quite a small group of people who do it professionally, maybe around 200 around the world. At the moment I am the only one in Ireland. I was actually asked to go to that project in Glastonbury last year but was working somewhere else at the time.
Its in the area I normally work. Great to see the progression of the sculpture in the days leading up to it.
I think it is as much a performance art as it is about the final sculpture.
@ammonite I must admit that these sculptures are very cool. I grew up in Southern California on the Ocean Front in the 60's as a kid the best I could do was a Sand Castle using my little Plastic Bucket and Shovel.
I grew up pretty close to the beach but never was too interested in playing with the sand. I think I made up for it in later life.
Wow. Its awesome to see some people still working with hands. Technology is good too but cnc has its limits. What can be conveyed with handmade can never be conveyed with readymade or factory made.
Loved your work.
I work wood and carve stuff. Resteeming your post. Follow me if you like.
Thank you, Yes hand made will always have a place even as the machines take over. It is too difficult to get machines to improvise.
Magnificent failure :-)
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