Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Table of Contents

Prologue: "Wind, Sand and Psyche"
1. Concrete
2. Forms
3. Development
4. Grain
5. Art

Friday, March 04, 2005

Wind, Sand and Psyche

The wind runs out of the cold West. I'm exhausted. Wind-blown salt covers my glasses and with the glow of sunset it's hard for me to see anything. I can see this sculpture, though, standing tall on the sloping beach. It's a mystery. I look around for the sculptor but I know who it is. I don't have to look for him. Somehow, he's me.

Some hours ago the beach was smooth and sun-flooded. I loaded the car, drove the short way to the parking lot and walked to the water with my bundle of Naugahyde and sticks and my bucket of tools. The tools are simple and cheap. I don't have any money for fancy stuff, but I do have ideas.

Diane and I have been talking about this, Diane who is with me in an internal expedition. We've talked about creativity and my love for building things that showed up when I was a kid. As we talk, through those long hours in Westwood, we lift the accumulated fog and see the connections between now and then.




One afternoon, Bob and I were hanging out on the beach at Maggie's Farm. I've always liked to play in sand. Being an adult gives me an advantage over children. I can move more sand. This long warm Maine beach whispered to my questing fingers, and I made piles and patterns of sand. Bob was busy with serious Photography and I just wanted to keep my hands sandy. Then I got an idea: Can I make an arch, a freestanding arch, out of this stuff? It sounded like something that could be done, but not easily. As an engineering problem it interested me.

I want to build a new sailing ship. I'd like to have one that is a little more realistic; the catamaran type I've been building stays upright but doesn't inspire my eight-year-old eye. This ought to be easy because we have half a garage full of woodworking equipment. I set to work with various tools and scrounged lumber. This ship, called Lightning after the Donald McKay clipper, starts to take shape. A little trimming with the miter box and then I'm ready to join the halves of the hull. Each half is about four inches wide. The only nails I can find are about three inches long. I'm stumped for a bit, but then I whip out the electric drill and blast a series of holes in the side of one half. With a punch I drive my short nails through to the other piece and have a hull. I'm on my way.

So I tried various techniques. I made a pile of damp sand and tunnelled through it. Worked for tunnels, but before it got close to being something that could be called an arch the roof caved in. I tried very wet sand, piled across a trickle of water running down to the sea, but it slumped even as I piled it. Noticing that the beach itself is hard, I dug two pits. The undisturbed sand between them did hold an arch. I dug several more, making a Roman aqueduct whose top was level with the beach. The technique worked but was aesthetically unsatisfying because the arch is underground. Night falls, ending the experiments. Fall came along and put a cold close on the beach season. Later, I left Maine.

In the gathering dark on the edge of California I stand in the wet running wind and contemplate the child of those Maine experiments. What stands here is a four-foot fantasy, interconnected loops of flying sand, product of my imagination that has taken a life of its own.

Maine was a couple of years gone. Out there in front of me was the warm Pacific with its long rollers coming in from Japan. Three thousand miles were behind me but sand is where you find it. I decided to try building a sand castle instead of my usual freeform shapes and piles. Any self-respecting castle has a handsome gated entry. That requires an arch, so I continue the experiments.
"That's impossible, Larry. It'll never work."

"Go tell that to the bumblebee; I have work to do. I'll believe it can't be done if I can't do it." I frequently had to wait for adults to understand something as well as I did. I'd come up with a solution, they'd try everything else, then take mine. Few things hurt more than being ignored; I spent a lot of time out on my own, figuring things out, enjoying the creative work of discovering or inventing new ways. I'd watch my latest ship sail across Indian Rock lake and redesign it in my mind.

What comes out as Diane and I talk about this is my delight in the process. Back then, just doing what I was doing, I didn't see that much. I thought everyone was like that. But when I was creative, solving things with no limits on the kind of solution, I was alive. School was dead. There, creativity mattered only if I went the approved way. I learned to act the way they wanted, but I knew the world wasn't made that way.

The cold blowing November dark closes around me. Dimly against the trampled surrounding sand I see this impossible structure raising defiant arches above the beach. Yes, I built it. Yes, I have watched people, passersby on the beach, respond in various ways to what I have made for myself. I've gotten somewhat used to it, inured in a way, after doing a dozen or so. After I'd made a few I wondered when I'd run out of ideas. As I stand for a few more moments and look at this latest sculpture I think of more ideas for new ones. Seems like each one makes room for ten more. So yes, I've gotten used to it but I don't understand it. I don't look too closely, either; magic doesn't tolerate tampering.

The gate wasn't coming together. I made a couple of pillars and then spanned the distance between with damp packed sand. Tunnelling through duplicates Maine's experience. I needed something new. Giving up on the castle, I went back to freeform playing. I tried putting my hand on the beach, covering it with sand, and then pulling it out. It worked, but the results were minuscule. I kept playing around. Beside me was a hole I'd dug deep enough, in getting sand for experiments, for seawater to seep into and make a puddle. I picked up some of the sandy water from the bottom of the hole and let it run from my fingers onto the beach. This made wonderful spires. I made lots of them and they grew, spreading and joining into a larger pile of sand.

Riding my slick red two-speed bicycle home from the swimming pool I roll down the short steep driveway out of the parking lot. There is sand at the bottom where I have to turn onto the street. I can make it without brakes, I decide. I spend the rest of the afternoon picking sand out of a nice collection of scrapes. That hurts. I have a new respect for sand on concrete. I've never made that kind of mistake again.

"I could never do that," I think as I look at a sculpture or read a book. That's real art. Where do they get the ideas and the ability? My own brain feels barren. As I turn sticks of wood and pampas grass into a ship, balsa into an airplane and sand into beauty I wonder why I am so lacking. The shy creatures of my mind learn to trust my relationship with Diane and they start to show themselves.

This idea is made solid. I can't see much; the sun is long down and the pier is a line of lights above dim white breakers. This sculpture is sturdy enough to stand. They don't always. Building it has taken most of my energy, but I can stand and walk long enough to get back to the car. It's a mystery, yes, but I am content to let this process be. Like the arches' delicate balance of mass against gravity my creativity is balanced between trust and ridicule. The arches spring from my own life. The engineering exercise has become a drive to express myself in the clearest language I know.

I wound up with a good-sized pile of dripped sand under a bunch of gargoylish spires. Wanting to start another, my hand went out to flatten this pile. It resisted, the whole pile moving sideways as a piece, sliding. I became alert, suddenly, completely. I started digging into the side of the pile. It was firm. The tunnel holed through and the ceiling stayed up. Enlarging it produced the form I wanted. The lesson, learned at Maggie's Farm in firm sand, grew up. Romans built them out of stone. St. Louis has one sheathed in stainless steel. Pasadena has a concrete beauty carrying a street across Arroyo Seco. I figured it out. Now Santa Monica had an arch made of sand.

Two years later, Santa Monica has a fancy arch. For three months I've been coming out here two or three times a week, a commuter to spend the day rearranging a ton of sand. The first two or three were simple variations on the arch theme but somewhere in there I woke up at the end of the day and found the arch still there but changed. The once-stiff sand now flows, draped around elegant hollows.

Next: "Concrete"

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Concrete

A flurry of activity produces an oblong pile of sand. Dig a hole in the beach, down where the sand is fine and water seeps in, steadily filling the hole. Grab a double handful of dripping sand, raise it, plop it down on the beach. Quickly, while the last layer is still wet, reach back into the hole, mix the sand around and pick up as much will fit into cupped hands. Lay it down on the growing pile, agitate it, let it flow and settle. Repeat until the pile is big enough to work with.

Water lubricates the sand grains; they float, briefly, in the slurry you mix up and plop onto the beach. Once the handful of sand is stationary, the water starts to flow out the bottom and the sand settles with it. As you agitate, the lubricated grains nestle in next to each other, turning and fitting. This is why a wet-packed pile is more solid than a damp sand pile.

There's a practical limit to the size of this free pile. The taller it is, the faster water settles out from the upper layers. If it gets too dry, the next layer's water will run out too quickly and the sand can't do its nestling. When the pile is carved, it'll split along the horizon. Build the pile up beyond about eighteen inches and you have trouble.

Repeated trips to the beach allowed me to refine the technique. Some of my arches fell before they were finished, sign of learning. Eventually I ran into the size limit, so I worked on adding detail. The last arch I built had a Gothic sort of shape, with inner arches. Then it was time to go back to school, back to dry flat Nebraska. With me went some photographs of these arches, taken by others. I was too busy building to shoot pictures, but the prints aroused lots of curiosity. I showed them to friends and posted one on the school's bulletin board.

Hang a string between two points: the curve it makes is a catenary, the physical response of string to gravity. The shape's signal feature is that all stress is in line with the string. It doesn't matter how much it curves, whether you pull it tight or let it hang deeply, the curve is a balanced catenary. Let the string hang so that the distance across is a little less than the vertical drop. Coat the string with epoxy, let it harden, then invert it. This is a catenary arch. Turn it to sand and you have a structure that balances gravity with compression, equally distributed along the legs. Go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco and you can make an arch out of loose blocks of wood. It stands, balanced, no glue in the joints. Sand stands also, with water's surface tension holding the grains together.

Next: "Forms"

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Forms

July 4, 1983, comes in cool. A real surprise for Nebraska. Jo wants to go for a drive out in the country, so we ride and talk, looking at the ripening wheat on the gentle hills north of Lincoln. After a while, we end up at a reservoir, Branched Oak. I spot a beach and my fingers start to itch. Photos are one thing, sand another. Both Jo and Mary want to see the real arch. We sneak into the place so I can sample the local sand. Despite some pebbles, it looks good.

A few weeks later, Jo and I pile with Mary into her Mustang and head for the beach. I have some tools: a spoon, a stick. The technique developed in Santa Monica works well here, except the sand releases its water more slowly so the pile, instead of giving me problems by drying out gives me problems by slumping. Instead of the old breakneck pace, I have to slow down, let each layer settle, then continue piling. No problem.

The problem was the beach's slope. There I was merrily carving my slowly built pile, getting that classic catenary shape, and then the whole thing falls over. Downhill. Concentration will do that; the arch looked straight to me as I sat cross-legged on the beach, right arm on the low side.

We come back, to try again. It being fall, there are few people around and we have the beach to ourselves. Brown water beats in little waves against this miniature beach, and the water ends a half-mile away instead of wrapping a third of the way around the world, but it's still a beach made of sand that makes hard-packed piles. This time I build my pile across the beach so everything will be level. Sun washes through the humid air, and a warm wind rattles the cottonwood leaves overhead.

There's a finished pile. Prepared to make another arch, I reach out to start digging but my hand is stayed. What am I doing? Making an arch, of course. Doesn't that seem a little familiar?

Sculpture is what you find in art museums or special gardens. The constructions I made of wood or plaster or clay didn't qualify, although I had an aesthetic I tried to follow. I just do things, I don't think about them.

I've already done arches. Playing in the sand is usually fun, but I'm bored. What's wrong with me? I just can't look forward to making another arch. Something sparks in my mind and my normal processes go away. Intensely I go at this pile of sand, cutting holes here, curving this surface. When I'm done there's something almost architectural, like a hotel for the 22nd century. A long gallery runs its length between sloped ends. Cross passages whose openings resemble the spoon of their carving pass through the short axis. It is unlike anything I've done before, and I'm flooded with a strange pleasure. This is new. It is little, clumsy, not anything like what I want to make. Want to make? What's going on? I look at this little thing and see... I see promise.

The inspiration is enough to make me improve my equipment. To combat the slumping problem, the next time we go to Branched Oak I take some boards with me. Tying the boards together makes a crude form, like the forms concrete is cast into. I pile my wet sand into this form, building it up without worrying about it collapsing. The sand leaks out through joints, but it holds up and the resulting pile is nearly three feet tall, to which I add another foot by free-piling some sand on top. After a dip in the lake, to cool myself from the construction, I remove the form and find a pile that feels like concrete. My puny tools are nearly inadequate for handling this level of compaction. The structure stands tall, with lots of interesting holes, short on design but long on challenge. And, responding to friends' browbeating, I take some photos of it.





A week later, we're at it again. Jo has dropped out from boredom, but Mary and I are having a wonderful time. It's getting cold, though; this will be the year's last chance.

Late September, leaves turning yellow, a little nip to the wind, days getting short. I've been thinking about what I want to make in the sand today, and I set up the form with this idea in mind. At the day's end, a long ridge rises gradually out of the sand, reaches a cusp, dives under an arch, rises on the other side, curving around to become the arch and continuing to curve, then fading once again into the beach. The curves are polished, smoothed into the landscape, and the structure has a finished look. It looks as if it belongs here. It resonates, ringing my soul like a bell. It raises questions I can't answer. It is almost frightening.

We hang around for a little while, taking some pictures. Somewhat stunned, I pack my stuff. We bid our good-bye to the beach, go home, put the tools away.

Next: "Development"

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Development

A year passes, warm fall running into cold winter. School runs into a rock and sinks, leaving me trying to figure out what to do with myself as winter grudgingly yields to spring. The school doesn't invite me back, and my roommates suggest I should find another place to live. I put my stuff into storage, rent a one-way car and head west.

In Denver I build some things for my sister. There's time for bike rides, one to Cherry Creek looking for sand. It's coarse. I content myself with more bike rides and walking in the mountains. My friend in L. A. wants me to visit, but I'm having fun in Colorado, in no hurry. Finally she prevails and I catch a plane west, computer and backpack in hand. Los Angeles is the paradigm case for the last place on earth I'd want to live, but financial options are few.

When I was in L. A. in 1982, I took a test for a job with the City. Arriving in 1984, I told them I was available. Then I just had to wait. The beach called. At first I used the equipment I had: two hands and a spoon. Having tasted alternatives in Nebraska, I went to work making better tools.

Whatever they were, they had to be cheap and portable. Anne had a five-gallon bucket for carrying water. A lumber yard sold me some scraps to use for stakes to support I'd conceived: a cheap plastic ground cloth wrapped around the stakes. To hold it together, I had a ball of string. I loaded this kit into Anne's car and headed west.

I thought the string would hold the plastic, I thought the sand would stay put, I thought... but there's no substitute for real experience. The experience failed miserably. The plastic sagged as soon as I tried to put sand in it, pushing out between the spiraling string. I scrapped the attempt and went bodysurfing followed by a free-pile sculpture. Back to the drawing board.

Obviously, the form material had to be stiffer. Couldn't be wood, though, because that's too bulky. Wandering around on Broadway one day, I went into a fabric store and found some Naugahyde upholstery material for half price. Once the light of day shone on the material I understood the price. The lumber yard sold me some laths; I cut a 12-foot piece of the bilious yellow material and glued laths to it every eight inches or so, to stiffen it. When finished it rolled around the stakes into a bundle about eight inches across.

I returned to the beach, carried my kit to the sand and went to work. The stakes, each about five feet long and an inch square, were driven into the beach in a circle. The Naugahyde form wrapped around them, and string wrapped around that held it together. So far so good. Then I started throwing buckets of sand into the form, followed by buckets of water. Another long stick got used to stir and tamp the sand. Repeat for an hour or so, and the form is full, all four feet of it. I untied the string, collected it onto a stick, removed the fabric, pulled out the stakes. Half the pile promptly fell over. Thinking about it, I realized that four feet of wet sand is very heavy. The sand underneath shifted, the pile split.

There was still half a pile. I cleared away the waste and started carving. It turned into three graceful curved tapering towers supporting arches. I'd learned something of forms, but nature also has a voice in sand sculpture. The tide almost got it, but some passersby pitched in to build a seawall so I could finish. Then I used Anne's Baggieflex—a Pentax Auto 110 carried in a plastic bag—to photograph the castle and the people. I would have been content to just make the piece, but Anne wanted to see what I was doing.





The experiment worked well enough that I went out to try again. Having thought about what happened with the second effort, for the third one I prepare the beach to hold the weight by wetting it and then doing a stamping dance until my feet no longer leave prints. The form works again and this time the whole pile stands, entire, cylindric. Another hurdle passed, and I also don't have to worry about tide because I've consulted a tide table and built out of its reach. And then parts of the sculpture fall off. Small parts, yes, but I still learn that an intact sculpture stands on a narrow divide between art and engineering.





The attempt is fascinating. It's free and freeing. Never before have I been able to engage in art. Half of the fourth attempt goes on the ground as soon as I unwrap the form but the remaining sand suggests some things, and I carve a succession of leaning arches, long tense curves leading upward to rounded tops. A fellow who'd been sitting behind me, watching, for some time comes up and places the origami bird he'd made in one of the openings. Some surface embellishment makes the whole thing look wind-blown and very graceful. I like it.

I had been thinking that this would be like every other project in my life. Once I solve the technical problems they become boring, and I'm no good at production. I figured I'd go out, make a few sculptures and then run out of ideas and stop. As I look at this sculpture, entirely unplanned yet beautiful, a shiver goes down my spine. Making this sculpture has suggested many more. What if I did this? Or this? The future opens out.





Determined to solve the pile failure problem, on the next effort I scrape away the dry surface sand to reach the damp sand beneath and then pack that with water. The pile holds, but the sculpture is down in a hole rimmed by waste sand. What could I do about this? How about building a raised base? Can I pack it well enough?

One day I decide to try it. I scrape the dry sand into a heap and then pour water on it, building it up in layers to about six inches tall, a broad frustum. I erect the form on the flat top and fill it. The pile splits after being unwrapped. In the remnant I carve a tall, thin, graceful structure that reminds some passersby of a cathedral. I tell them I didn't have that in mind because I don't believe in God. They tell me they'll pray for me.

The sculpture is tall and elegant, rising proud from the beach. The waste sand gets pulled away, sloping down, and the effect is great: a low conical base and then this sudden eruption of vertical sand. The idea works but needs better exectution. This is always important to learn: did something fail due to bad concept, or bad technique? There's nothing theoretically wrong with the raised base.



Basic technique has been established. It's mid-fall, late October or thereabouts. I build above the high tide line so I have plenty of time. I carry the water from the sea, up the beach, pour it into the form. If I time it well, the tide is high so I don't have to carry water so far. But it can't be too high, because the sand from down the beach is finer, so better for carving. I carry the sand up to the form and throw it in. Some days I don't have enough energy to do this, so build closer to the tide. After I get a tide table, it becomes possible to suit building location to my energy level. Gradually, as autumn moves imperceptibly into what passes for winter here, all that relocated sand builds a noticeable knoll right on the beach's cusp at the high-tide line.

Sand sculpture is made of the feel of the sand. The waves come and go, wind blows and I work. From some deep place comes this shape that lives briefly and then disappears. Photographs miss that. They're static, flat, lifeless. They don't contain the feel of the sand grains or the calls of the gulls or the feel of wind-driven spray. All they do is show the most basic elements of a form: patterns of light and dark on paper. I shoot them for friends, but within my mind is a much more detailed representation.

The photos have to go somewhere. It does no good to leave them in envelopes, so I buy some inexpensive albums and start putting them in there. How do I differentiate them? The sculptures need names or something. Eventually I decide on numbers and a letter. The first two numbers are the year, then a letter denoting Form or free-Pile, then a serial number for the year. At first I only gave numbers to finished sculptures, but finally decided starts should get a number. Other codes indicate why a sculpture didn't get finished: CCF for complete construction failure, CPF for complete pile failure. Partial failures go to completion, with a PCF indication. All this helps me remember what I did, years later.

The unthinkable happens: the City hires me. I'm to report December 10. I've done about twelve castles. Anne is chiding me about that name; seems what I do has gone beyond the castle that spawned the idea. I'm loath to call them sculptures; that seems too serious but there is no other term that fits. What else could I call them? They become sculptures. Gainfully employed, I wind up going to the beach on weekends. It seems like a different place. Lots more people asking questions.

People are an interesting part of the process. They walk up and ask "What is it?" I tell 'em it's a fantasy, whatever they'd like it to be. Some of the people are regulars, like Bruce the lifeguard. People see what they want to see. A couple comes up from some church, tells me that I will soon be saved. They see it. I don't have the heart to tell them I've already been saved once, and threw it over. A priest sees a cathedral. Joggers go on by. Some of them look, some of them run a circle around me, some of them just plain stop. High compliment. On weekends, I discover it's hard to get anything done for all the questions.

The pattern evolves. Go to the beach, make a sculpture, take some photos, go home. For a few trips, I have to use the bus. Then I learn how to attach all my stuff to my motorcycle. Years go by, 1985 turning to 1986, and that passes into 1987. My skills develop.

With them, photography develops into a little more than a pain in the neck. After all, although I have felt the sand pass through my fingers and the damp wind in my hair, what makes the memory unique is the shape of the sculpture and the photographic paper's memory is molre accurate than mine. My relationship with Anne came apart in an ugly way but each photo I take of a sculpture or look at later is her legacy. What started as habit turned into a part of the process.

At the end of the day, when the sculpture is cleaned up and the base area landscaped, I start doing more thorough photography. A full walkaround of 12 photos, more or less. Once, I even washed my hands many times to take photos of the sculpture in process.

And then, like the mistimed tide rising to take out a work in progress, other aspects of my life undermine the foundation needed for art. I simply quit. The form is rolled up and standing in a corner of the garage, gathering dust.





Next: Grain