The island of Atlantis is quite a popular story in many cultures and it's mythology can be found in lots of literature through the centuries since Plato first spoke of it. What an interesting theme for a sand sculpture project hoping to be the Guinness Book of Records attempt as the world's largest and tallest. Unfortunately the project suffered the same fate as it's name sake.
I was so excited to be invited to this really big project in Sand Diego, the Americas. I had only been carving sand for one year and was surprised they would invite someone so amateur. Luckily, in those days there weren't that many sand sculptors and to do something of this scale all hand were on deck.
Rocky foundations
I was part of a contingent coming from Europe of around 30 carvers. We would have two weeks to work our magic. Four of us from Ireland were invited and had postponed our return ticket for a week to have a little holiday after our hard work.
On arriving we were met with this site and I mean this Site. There was nothing ready and nobody seemed to have a clue what was going on. We gathered organically in different groups and spent our first week compacting. I really don't mind this kind of work but flying in 60 sculptors from around the world to do this kind of work seemed like a waste of resources. One team of Japanese cavers which included a mayor could only spend one week on the project and that week they had to shovel sand leaving before they could make any sculpture.
The wild west
When the Japanese left we all got to work. It was mayhem with nobody knowing what to do and fights breaking out as people tried to exert their dominance. What really pissed me off was all the American 'Master carvers' (As they called themselves) showing up when all the hard work was done and walking around like they owned the place, earmarking sand that we had compacted for their own 'Masterpiece'.
I am no master beater so I found a little place to work far on the other side of the sculpture.I would be working with a group of Danish and a Catalonian sculptor. I had just meet most of them but I seemed like it would be fun group to work with.
Extensive research
We quickly decided we do something a little different and discussed about what had actually happened to Atlantis. The Danes in their viking mythology have this big worm called Jorungard's Worm. It encircles the earth with it's tall in its mouth. If it was to lose hold of it's tail disaster would befall the earth and that's what happened to Atlantis. I know, a bit of a tenuous link but we just wanted to have a bit of fun while the Sand Atlantis was falling all around us.
We really had a great time making our 'Big scary monster' as we called it. I remember working on his back and the fan like form running down his back. Then spent lots of time making the cracked paving to give the appearance of him bursting out of the ground to attack the city above.
The rest of the project was not finished when we left on our weeks holiday south of the border down Mexico way. We were asked to stay and help finish but after the hard work we had already done and the toxic environment we declined. I really didn't like San Diego and the American way. Once we crossed the border to Mexico we really let our hair down and there are some crazy stories from that time. They involve lots of tequila and nudity so I won't go into them here.
The project never got the record in the end due to not being finished and being hit by a hurricane soon after we had come back to Ireland
As a special bonus for this post here is a little super8 film I made during the project
Ps
I hope you don't mind my long winded posts, I really look at what I do on steemit as part of a long form memoir of my work. It may not be of interest to everyone but once I get started the memories flood back. Thanks for reading if you have gotten to here and a special bonus thank you to those who have read to here. For those wanting more of my nonsense check out some of my previous posts below
Monther Earth - sand sculpture
Glitch - Short film
I hope you'll join me again soon. All comments welcome
@ammonite