Now it's time for something a bit bigger, a whole festival made from sand. The great thing about this material is the fact that it completely scalable and back in the early days of me working with sand I had the pleasure of working on these large projects in ZeeBruggee, Belgium.
It was a yearly event which had around 50 sculptors, Mostly amateur, working on it. There was no payment for our work in those days, just food and lodgings. I didn't really care as it was a great chance to have fun in the sun with some great people. I was learning lots and making some great connections all around Europe.
Architecture
I've never really liked making buildings out of sand and maybe it was this first experience that cemented the fact. My first job on the project was to make that blocky building in the upper left middle of this photo. I don't even remember what building it was that I was asked to copy but just know that once I had carved one window and look at all the others still to do I knew making architecture was not for me and resolved that I would try to avoid it for the rest of my career. It is slow and tedious work and as you can see I left out a couple of those panes in the glass. There are some sculptors who get a kick out of it but not me.
The prodigal Son
For my second piece I made this . Based on Rodins sculpture of the same name. I can't for the life of me remember why I didn't give the old man a beard like in the original. It would have helped me support his head so I could lean him more forward.
Nude model
I was then asked to make this model being drawn and painted in different styles. I worked with another sculptor; Peter Busch from Denmark. It is never a good idea to have two people working on the same figure. Invariably the proportions will get out of wack and as you can see from the perfect example the figure ends up looking like something Picasso would have doodled.
It was fun project and we all had a great laugh while working and in the evening times which usually went on to 5am. The sculpture itself was like a big collage of elements with not much thought for the overall composition. This would become a common trait of Inaxi projects. Inaxi was a Dutch company that organised these big project during the 90s and 2000s. Architecture on top flowing down into a hodge podge of stuff. But we were all still learning and the visitors seemed to love it with lines of people queuing up to pay entrance and see what we had created. I remember seeing these lines and wondering why we weren't being paid.
Below are some panoramic pics of the event. As with all my images you can click to see the bigger versions.
Ps
Thank you for joining me again or welcome if this is your first time to see my posts. What follows is something I've been meaning to say for a while. If you are just here for the sand sculpture post you can skip to the bottom and maybe check out some of my recent posts.
Private service announcment
I have decided to make a few changes in the way I use steemit. Probably the biggest change for me is that I am starting to upvote my blog as I publish them. When I first joined steemit and made my first post I saw a tick box saying to 'upvote post. 'I thought this was there as a test to see what type of person I was. Surely it was up to others to decided if my posts were worthy of a reward.
I set out thinking I would never self vote as it seemed a bit presumptuous to do so. Now several months in, knowing how the system works and that it is as much about game theory as it is about the content I produce I have decided to change my ways and instead of investing all my voting power in others I think it is time to invest a small portion in myself and my work so that I can grow and give more back to others in the long run. My voting power is worth around 16 cent at the moment so me upvoting my own (couple of hours work) posts I believe is exceptable. Why didn't I just do it and say nothing? Well I just wanted to document this change of thought in my steemit journey.
Another change is I have decided to be a bit more chronological in the sculptures I post. As I grow on Steem I want my work to improve also and showing this type of work to my millions of followers which I one day may have :) probably won't really cut it. This way I get to document old yet important works in my development knowing that I'm not boring too many people. For those loyal followers already with me I hope you understand and are patient.
Textual intercourse - short film
Charon the ferryman - sand sculpture
I hope you'll join me again soon.
@ammonite