Catch the Wind - sand sculpture

This sculpture is dedicated to my parents and the love they captured between them. It is a personal piece, but I suppose all artworks really should be or else whats the point. For the 2009 Dublin Castle sand sculpture exhibition we gave ourselves the theme 'The four elements' and as usual, drew our personal theme from a hat. Mine was Wind

How was I going to capture this in a sculpture? I thought. It's invisible and you can only see it by its affect (or is that effect?). I thought about other things with similar traits and found love.
I don't know why but the song by Donovan ' Catch the wind' kept coming to mind and I found inspiration in that.

I suppose when you have been together as long as my parents the love that is shown is maybe not the most obvious but being married for 58 years and raising a family of 10 shows that there was a large supply.

With my sculpture I decided on having their two hands come together and capture a space in between them which symbolism their love. Originally I planned to make a fan like element in the center and see if I could get it to rotate on a platform but the sand wasn't the strongest so, I needed to make things a bit more chunky than I would have liked and move the fan to the outside.

I had my parents hand model for me so I could get all the texture detail and structure correct although with the sand I needed to adjust a few things for support. When carving large objects this is sometimes necessary to avoid overhangs.

My parents loved the sculpture and were happy to be part of it. Most of my work kind of goes over their heads. With this one they were interested in my process of ideas.

My father passed away last year after a long illness. He will be sadly missed as he was always the one that I would call if I had any technical questions when I was making something. He was a gentleman and a genius. My mother is still fighting fit and is always on the other end of the phone when I need advice on how to show that love for my own little family.

Ps

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