The upside down - sand sculpture

I remember showing a friend that I hadn't seen for a long time my early sand sculptures. Impressed and all as he said he was he quickly pointed out that they were all very pyramidal, meaning they all looked like they were pointy at the top and larger at the base. I was quick to point out that sand has a tendency to want to collapse and like a church with a spire you need to engineer it in such a way to buttress all the weight on top and create a design which has arch like structures in the composition. Having something large on top would very much disagree with the laws of gravity but It did get my thinking and wanting to find solutions.

Exhibit #075

With this piece I wanted to turn the world on it's head... literally and make the whole sculpture upside down. Then show my friend his precious weight on top and a smaller base. In the words of Newton "Na na nana na!!" granted one of his lesser know saying but you get the idea.

It started with a ball

@stijgerart and I attended this project in Neusiedl am See, Austria and each of us got to do a solo sand sculpture. Having a theme of 'The Sea' was nice as it is one of my favourite places to visit as a swimmer and diver. To make things more interesting for ourselves we decided to make a challenge for each other, start our sculptures by making a big ball and use that for the starting point of our piece. So we each went and made an exact similar sized ball out of our compaction then we broke away and used it to make what we wanted.

For me I began cutting holes into my ball and created a Swiss cheese like structure inside, like some sort of sponge like creature.

I really liked the piece to explore but it really couldn't be appreciated or understood when viewed from the outside it was really quite organic and indescribable. Something more to be experienced than photographed but I did take some shoot at night with a light and I loved the way the light and shadows played in its caverns.

As support for the ball I made some bubbles bubbling up to a waved surface like the object was just floating below the sea-level below (or above) then I played around with the idea of the sky with clouds carved in negative. It was all very experimental and I wasn't sure if it would become an understood sculpture. Especially when viewed by the public.

All sand sculptures will eventually fall back to dust only to live on in the memory of those who saw them and of course in photographs. Knowing this fact I was also experimenting with the idea that having my piece only make sense in a picture which was upside down was interesting, even if it was only me who found it interesting.

The creature from the depths

I wanted to pull my sculpture back from complete abstraction and to try and give it a focal point and human connection. So, I made a figure swimming alongside the ball and bubbles. Although, not human it borrowed some anatomy for a woman but had gills and a face which looked quite alien. I had tried to design her how I thought a merperson would be. I think by including her it was like the key to how the sculpture should be viewed.

As a sculpture it may have been quite confusing, I could see the audience scratching their heads. Maybe if they did photograph it and saw the image downside years later up it would have made perfect sense.

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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.

Hans Christian Andersen - sand sculpture

Berlin sand festival 2005 - sand sculpture

Beauty is only skin deep -sand sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon
@ammonite