Splash - sand sculpture

If you could be any animal, which would it be? I made my decision many years ago when I saw a cormorant off the coast of Ireland. These birds can fly, walk and swim giving them the best of all worlds. To see them dive is really quite special as they collapse up in the air like a rocket and pierce the ocean's surface with ner a ripple. Like me, they are not the most attractive creatures in the world but their interdimensional travel is where their true beauty lies.

Did you know that humans have lots of physical features that show our aquatic evolution? We have blubber like other sea mammals, Our hair and noses are in line with the flow of water as we swim, and coolest of all our heartbeat automatically drops when we enter the water. We are water babies whether we know it or not. I really think that if we could fly it would be the icing on our cake.

Breaking the surface

The last sculpture I documented was about Scuba diving, Today we have one about diving through the surface of the water.

That feeling as you launch yourself like superman into the air and sail down in a leap of faith is exhilarating. It is a scary time that seems to slow until finally you hit the water and enter another world of calm and peace. I just love it to bits. This sculpture was about that moment, crossing the divide.

I had never been to Marbella before as is would not be the kind of place I would like to visit except for my work. These holiday destinations don't interest me, way too noisy and fake but I was glad I got to visit on this project to confirm my suspicions. I'll say no more except I'll probably never return unless there is a pile of sand to be carved.

Powdered lava

We used the beach sand that was there and although it wasn't very good for carving it did have some interesting attributes. Very light in colour, in the Mediterranean sun it was like carving lava. I could not walk in my bare feet or I would be burned to a crisp. Another thing about the sand was that it had lots of iron in it. My metal tools would get magnetised through use and then powdered iron dust would stick to them meaning continual wiping on my shirt. Maybe this also caused it to get so hot in the sun as it could have stored the heat. (This is just a theory)

My sculpture doesn't need much more description apart from what I wrote here. It was just some girl diving into the water and had a certain Mermaid vibe about it. I really had to slope everything backwards to stop it from collapsing and in the end, it was a very much one-sided being more of an image than an actual sculpture.

Back-breaking work

The only other noteworthy thing about the project was that I really did myself some serious damage on the last day. I was working on the bottom trying to create a kind of desert effect with sailing rocks and sand ripples. I was leaning over for ages trying to finish the trench that I had made around the sculpture and when I went to stand up my back got a severe stabbing pain. I figured that with a couple of days rest it would get better but over the next few months, it would develop into a very bad sciatic nerve pain that travelled all the way down my leg.

I am sure I will bring it up again over the next couple of posts as I continued to try and work through incredible pain.