June 17: 05F-7 "A Better Balance"
For details on this sculpture, read the report that follows the images.
An Invitation to Balance
It is very hard for me to feel welcome anywhere. Old habits die hard and only God's patient provision of strength enables me to contemplate for any time the idea that people might actually want me around.
God's timing is something else. Looking for general information on the "Myst" series of games I wandered into the Uru Obsession forum one day last summer. I was between games and wanted to find out what was going on. I'd picked up hints of Cyan's activities and game plans in other places, but for some reason hadn't come upon this comprehensive source.
Since I first connected a computer to a phone line in 1983 I've participated in many on-line forums, and found them to be a very mixed bag. Most are specialized. Those that aren't seem to specialize in flame wars and triviality. UO turned out to be a more interesting place because of its wide range of people and topics. Seemed as if anything would fit there, so long as the discussion stayed civil. I liked this, and read the forum regularly. My written responses didn't arouse a lot of interest, but enough that I kept on.
Eventually I discovered areas of the forum devoted to people's Web sites and art. One day, on a whim, probably post-sculptural and therefore a little loose of judgment, I posted an image of a recent sand sculpture.
What enabled this is a modern technical transformation. In the old days, say about three years ago, if you wanted to post images on a Web site you had to prepare the images, write the HTML, then use an FTP program to ship the files to your URL. Through various people who have Blogs, I learned about photo hosting. You use your browser to ship the images and then copy the image URL to anyplace you want to put it, including forum messages. I have spent many hundreds of hours converting sculpture reports to HTML and then uploading them. Eventually I quit doing it; my Web site hasn't been updated in three years. I'd rather do sculpture than spend hours making Web pages about them.
Anyway, the image was quite popular, and people asked to see more. Now, in years past, this might not have made a difference; I would have been quite likely to ignore the request and slink off in embarrassment. The Holy Spirit can teach old dogs new tricks, patiently and with great love, and this time I actually listened. As the rains let up and I could sculpt regularly, I made a habit of putting the completed Email image assembly on Photobucket and then linking to a Forum page.
Word spread. I gained a reputation and got an invitation to post images on another forum. Keep in mind this was all minimalist stuff: images only, and done as economically as I could. Then I got an invitation to join another forum. This one was different, centered on art and beautiful in itself. The people there were very enthusiastic, so one day gathered all of my 2004 image assemblies and posted them there in a "2004 Retrospective" exhibit. At the end of this, more joking than anything else, I wrote that I was planning a 2003 version.
The response was "We're waiting." Well, that meant I had to actually do it. My 2003 images were a mess. I'd done very few assemblies; I was still getting used to the digital camera and the ease of image prep made me sloppy. I'd do an image and just ship it, bare, to the list of people. A day or two later I'd do another. I pretty much had to start over from scratch... and with an audience waiting, inviting, I couldn't resist. That I really needed to update "Human Touch" with current content didn't really matter. No, I felt the welcome and it drew out of me all these new versions of old images. This fits very well with the spirit of Until Uru that I've experienced.
One day I was working on images--it's a good thing to do when you're tired of the world and just want to stay indoors and listen to music--when I remembered that I wrote some sculpture reports for the 2003 sculptures. I had no idea if a 5000-word story would fit on a forum, but I asked. The answer was "Give it a try." I did. The response was "We like it." I posted the rest of them and a follow-on story.
And yet I live in the present. I'm only as good as my last sculpture. What is a sand sculptor when he's between dates? It's time to get out of the house and throw everything into another pile of sand.
Build number: 05F-7 (lifetime start #305) filtered low tide sand
Title: "A Better Balance" (for Jeruth)
Date: June 17 (Friday)
Location: Venice Breakwater, south side cusp
Start: 0900; construction time approx 8 hours
Height: 3.3 feet (Latchform); sokkel height about 5 inches
Base: 1.75 feet nominal diameter
Assistant: none
Photo digital: EOS-1D walkaround, Powershot G2 details
Photo 35mm: none
Photo 6X7: none
Photo volunteer: none
Video motion: none (camcorder not brought)
Video still: none
Video volunteer: none
Equipment note: O-ring failure in sprayer
1. I Guess It's Practice
People are sometimes surprised that I play no musical instruments. I tell them the answer is simple: I don't like to practice. The endless running of scales that is required in maintenance of skill is too tedious for one who believes in using the minimum necessary discipline.
Sand sculpture is an event in itself. Not practice, but the real thing. it does have this odd effect: anything you do repeatedly you'll quite likely get better at. Imagination works with skills and ideas advance, driving the skills forward. Sand sculpture requires a number of different skills and while it might look like herding cats, the whole group tends to move forward. What is forward? Good question. The answer changes through the years. Sculptures that were impossible a few years ago are now routine and that drives a search for new ways of expression. Will I ever make a perfect sculpture? Beats me, but I enjoy trying.
I certainly notice rusty skills after long breaks. The first part of the year got rained out and it has taken me a while to get my chops back. The pause was good in a way because it enabled me to think about the process without the distraction of actually making something. This is another balance.
All I know is that it's time for one man, one day and one sculpture. Each one connects to its predecessors and is a step on the way to the next, even if the step looks to be back. You just have to keep going.
In one of the 2003 sculptures I saw a harbinger of the idea that has consumed me for the last year: complex internal structure. It was a simple expression of what developed more fully last year and has taken a new turn this year. Growing skill leads to faster carving, which means I can do more complex ideas. The key is to keep the complexity under control. The last sculpture was overdone in some areas, underdone in others. I'd like to do something more in line with the forum's tag line for me: "Balancing with Sand."
2. Conditions
Fridays are quiet. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, I avoid Saturdays on the beach. I told my boss I wanted to take Friday off for an emergency sand sculpture. He's understanding. I headed for the beach.
It was a mess. The red tide of a few weeks ago had, as usual, killed a lot of mussels and their shells were in a solid line. Seaweed mixed with more shells littered the flat area behind the Breakwater, which is my favored building site. Looking around, I found a clean area just above the tidal cusp about three hundred feet back from the Breakwater. It would have to do. I made a mussel-free path for my bare feet and went to work.
At least the sand was good. Down around the 2-foot level was a thick layer of fine sand. Getting it to the building site was rough; normally I deal with more gradual gradients as I haul by 250-pound loads up. Full loads were impossible so I lightened them, which is why this sculpture is a little shorter than normal.
A cool sea breeze came in under low clouds. The mountains were cut off at about 1500 feet, but the clouds receded as I worked and by the time the form was full there were patches of blue presaging a warm afternoon.
3. Plan
Sculptures come from some deep place, the process managed by a tense mix of prior planning and ad-hoc decision-making. Planning is another skill that improves with this practice-that-isn't. I can visualize more complex sculptures now than I could last year. In the last year the sculptures have taken on a flowing presence that makes earlier ones look stiff.
For today's piece I had an idea for multiple layers of thin panels with small arabesque designs in them. Fitting all of that into a 21-inch cylinder will be a trick. All I have to do is make them thin enough.
Here I'm building on recent learnings. Things that look thin can be held up by hidden beams or other structure. A thin element by itself is very unstable, but with a stiffening element behind it becomes much stronger.
So, today's effort focuses on bubble-shapes springing from the core, light and airy, with outside detail contrasting with both the detail in the inside and some smooth panels outside. With careful engineering the detail can be carried all the way to the sculpture's bottom.
4. Making It
There's not much to do while packing sand. It's a well-practiced routine. Layer by layer the sand builds inside the form and my mind wanders.
Call me a guided pinball. I don't really know where I'm going but I bounce off of some things and am attracted by others. I tend to be a pragmatic opportunist. My mind turns to Until Uru and the people I've met there, people who make a priority of going to this community that exists mainly in our minds but built around the Cyan infrastructure. Some of it has to be built. The rest, as Yeesha says in Uru, grows.
It grows from the actions of the residents. Each of us affects others. You'd think that in a low-bandwidth communication scheme detail would get lost but it's somehow still there, for those who choose to pick it up.
In face-to-face communication I tend to run at a disadvantage because I want to think about what people say. This makes me slow; the conversation moves onward before I'm ready to respond. I spend a lot of time listening. In Until Uru everyone has to slow down, and words remain on the screen to be re-read. I'm on an equal footing at last.
Something like two hours later, barring time taken for a few conversations with curious passers-by, the form is as full as it's going to get. I do the usual utility things while I can. Once I've started carving I can't leave the sculpture, and my friend Rich is unable to be here.
Carving starts on the north side with the long bulge that's part of the plan. Inside of that, on the west, I start the cut that would have become the large lower cavity, but this gets derailed by other ideas at the top. This is typical. What fun is carving to a complete plan? I'm only partly an engineer.
I end up balancing the lower north bulge with one on the south side near the top. The sculpture takes on an odd sort of symmetry, with similar east and west aspects but it's skewed from one side to the other. There's lots of space in there, so I carve the intended detail up there and leave the bottom more solid.
Except I finally wake up and realize I can still do part of what I wanted there. Delicately I cut back behind the curtain wall on the west. Then I carve the curtain into a set of curves reminiscent of Kadish Tolesa's circles.
As has become typical, clean-up is a real problem. I don't have brushes small enough to get into many of the places I've carved, and the sheer amount of detail means it'd take all day to do a proper job of it. I get it as good as I can with the day's dwindling energy reserve and then sign it. Done. And it didn't explode.
I'm still worried about longevity. My new high-zoot sprayer works well when it works, but it depends on an O-ring to seal the top and this O-ring has been cut by the seat. No pressure. No spray, on a day that was warm and even though cooling is still dry. Water holds the sculpture together. I hurriedly photograph it and it stays intact.
5. Aftermath
I really should mount the wide-angle lens, but the big camera's batter is finally flat. I shoot some details with the "little" Powershot (I tried to give it to Rich but he said it was too big; he refuses to use the "big" camera) and then pack up. I'm done.
At home, there's a message from Nate. "Tradition." That's all he has to say. There's barely time to take a shower. Killer Shrimp is better without the sand.
And there's always time for Until Uru. I link in to find out what's going on. Supergram and Old Man are in the UO neighborhood, so I head there and find lots of activity. People linking in and out, Old Man in his usual spot. When he asks me how I'm doing I say "I feel as if I've been run over by a truck, but that's typical."
"How did it go today?" I'd told him yesterday I was sculpting.
"Very well, thanks. It's quite a piece."
"Did you get pictures?" Supergram asks.
"Yes."
"Are you going to post them?"
"Certainly."
Now, this was a nice friendly group. When the phone rang I answered, and when it turned out to be a friend I told the folks on-line that I'd be back in a while and parked my avatar. Right there in plain sight. Then I saw an administrator link in. Nothing for it but to watch. I'm toast.
"How do you feel?" Larry asked on the phone. "Big truck or little?"
He knows about post-sculptural syndrome. "Medium-sized. How'd you know?"
"I had a delivery out here and decided to walk the beach. And here was the sculpture. Seems to be about 80% complete."
"It was complete when I left."
"Yes, I guessed. You don't sign them unless they're complete."
"Right."
On the screen I watch Drakmyth. Yep. He has spotted me. Parked avatars take on a head-down, seated position that's unique. Soon there's a cordon of cones surrounding my helpless, harmless avatar.
"What fell off? That big balloon part on the south?"
"No, something on the north."
"I thought that was stable. Could have been vandals."
"I don't know. Right now there's a man guarding it while his wife goes off to get her camera."
Drak extrudes the cones upward out of sight. I'm in a prison of orange bars. Fear the power of the Shahr A'hdmin.
"Well, I'm back at my car. I'll talk to you later."
"OK. Have fun."
"Good night."
He hangs up. What do I do now?
Well, face the music. I take the avatar out of park and stand up. I'm greeted with catcalls and the usual "wb" that means welcome back.
"What happened to me? Who let Drak in here?"
I try skydiving to get over the cones, but they go all the way to the cavern roof. Supergram tries to find the upper limit but can't get there. My only alternative to staying is to idiot-Relto out. There's no point in playing on Drak's mercy. But tonight he is relaxed. After a few minutes he removes the bars and I can run free.
Then I hear Nate honking. "I have to go, folks. My dinner friends are here."
"Have a good dinner, Ktahdn."
"Thanks."
After dinner I link back in. They're still at. We talk about art, community and creativity after Jeruth links in, seated on the table that Drakmyth made from a pumpkin and some cones. I stay up far too late, but at least I'm doing something other than tossing in bed. After sculptures I can't sleep. The night becomes quiet around me as the conversation goes on.
Written 2005 June 18
An Invitation to Balance
It is very hard for me to feel welcome anywhere. Old habits die hard and only God's patient provision of strength enables me to contemplate for any time the idea that people might actually want me around.
God's timing is something else. Looking for general information on the "Myst" series of games I wandered into the Uru Obsession forum one day last summer. I was between games and wanted to find out what was going on. I'd picked up hints of Cyan's activities and game plans in other places, but for some reason hadn't come upon this comprehensive source.
Since I first connected a computer to a phone line in 1983 I've participated in many on-line forums, and found them to be a very mixed bag. Most are specialized. Those that aren't seem to specialize in flame wars and triviality. UO turned out to be a more interesting place because of its wide range of people and topics. Seemed as if anything would fit there, so long as the discussion stayed civil. I liked this, and read the forum regularly. My written responses didn't arouse a lot of interest, but enough that I kept on.
Eventually I discovered areas of the forum devoted to people's Web sites and art. One day, on a whim, probably post-sculptural and therefore a little loose of judgment, I posted an image of a recent sand sculpture.
What enabled this is a modern technical transformation. In the old days, say about three years ago, if you wanted to post images on a Web site you had to prepare the images, write the HTML, then use an FTP program to ship the files to your URL. Through various people who have Blogs, I learned about photo hosting. You use your browser to ship the images and then copy the image URL to anyplace you want to put it, including forum messages. I have spent many hundreds of hours converting sculpture reports to HTML and then uploading them. Eventually I quit doing it; my Web site hasn't been updated in three years. I'd rather do sculpture than spend hours making Web pages about them.
Anyway, the image was quite popular, and people asked to see more. Now, in years past, this might not have made a difference; I would have been quite likely to ignore the request and slink off in embarrassment. The Holy Spirit can teach old dogs new tricks, patiently and with great love, and this time I actually listened. As the rains let up and I could sculpt regularly, I made a habit of putting the completed Email image assembly on Photobucket and then linking to a Forum page.
Word spread. I gained a reputation and got an invitation to post images on another forum. Keep in mind this was all minimalist stuff: images only, and done as economically as I could. Then I got an invitation to join another forum. This one was different, centered on art and beautiful in itself. The people there were very enthusiastic, so one day gathered all of my 2004 image assemblies and posted them there in a "2004 Retrospective" exhibit. At the end of this, more joking than anything else, I wrote that I was planning a 2003 version.
The response was "We're waiting." Well, that meant I had to actually do it. My 2003 images were a mess. I'd done very few assemblies; I was still getting used to the digital camera and the ease of image prep made me sloppy. I'd do an image and just ship it, bare, to the list of people. A day or two later I'd do another. I pretty much had to start over from scratch... and with an audience waiting, inviting, I couldn't resist. That I really needed to update "Human Touch" with current content didn't really matter. No, I felt the welcome and it drew out of me all these new versions of old images. This fits very well with the spirit of Until Uru that I've experienced.
One day I was working on images--it's a good thing to do when you're tired of the world and just want to stay indoors and listen to music--when I remembered that I wrote some sculpture reports for the 2003 sculptures. I had no idea if a 5000-word story would fit on a forum, but I asked. The answer was "Give it a try." I did. The response was "We like it." I posted the rest of them and a follow-on story.
And yet I live in the present. I'm only as good as my last sculpture. What is a sand sculptor when he's between dates? It's time to get out of the house and throw everything into another pile of sand.
Build number: 05F-7 (lifetime start #305) filtered low tide sand
Title: "A Better Balance" (for Jeruth)
Date: June 17 (Friday)
Location: Venice Breakwater, south side cusp
Start: 0900; construction time approx 8 hours
Height: 3.3 feet (Latchform); sokkel height about 5 inches
Base: 1.75 feet nominal diameter
Assistant: none
Photo digital: EOS-1D walkaround, Powershot G2 details
Photo 35mm: none
Photo 6X7: none
Photo volunteer: none
Video motion: none (camcorder not brought)
Video still: none
Video volunteer: none
Equipment note: O-ring failure in sprayer
1. I Guess It's Practice
People are sometimes surprised that I play no musical instruments. I tell them the answer is simple: I don't like to practice. The endless running of scales that is required in maintenance of skill is too tedious for one who believes in using the minimum necessary discipline.
Sand sculpture is an event in itself. Not practice, but the real thing. it does have this odd effect: anything you do repeatedly you'll quite likely get better at. Imagination works with skills and ideas advance, driving the skills forward. Sand sculpture requires a number of different skills and while it might look like herding cats, the whole group tends to move forward. What is forward? Good question. The answer changes through the years. Sculptures that were impossible a few years ago are now routine and that drives a search for new ways of expression. Will I ever make a perfect sculpture? Beats me, but I enjoy trying.
I certainly notice rusty skills after long breaks. The first part of the year got rained out and it has taken me a while to get my chops back. The pause was good in a way because it enabled me to think about the process without the distraction of actually making something. This is another balance.
All I know is that it's time for one man, one day and one sculpture. Each one connects to its predecessors and is a step on the way to the next, even if the step looks to be back. You just have to keep going.
In one of the 2003 sculptures I saw a harbinger of the idea that has consumed me for the last year: complex internal structure. It was a simple expression of what developed more fully last year and has taken a new turn this year. Growing skill leads to faster carving, which means I can do more complex ideas. The key is to keep the complexity under control. The last sculpture was overdone in some areas, underdone in others. I'd like to do something more in line with the forum's tag line for me: "Balancing with Sand."
2. Conditions
Fridays are quiet. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, I avoid Saturdays on the beach. I told my boss I wanted to take Friday off for an emergency sand sculpture. He's understanding. I headed for the beach.
It was a mess. The red tide of a few weeks ago had, as usual, killed a lot of mussels and their shells were in a solid line. Seaweed mixed with more shells littered the flat area behind the Breakwater, which is my favored building site. Looking around, I found a clean area just above the tidal cusp about three hundred feet back from the Breakwater. It would have to do. I made a mussel-free path for my bare feet and went to work.
At least the sand was good. Down around the 2-foot level was a thick layer of fine sand. Getting it to the building site was rough; normally I deal with more gradual gradients as I haul by 250-pound loads up. Full loads were impossible so I lightened them, which is why this sculpture is a little shorter than normal.
A cool sea breeze came in under low clouds. The mountains were cut off at about 1500 feet, but the clouds receded as I worked and by the time the form was full there were patches of blue presaging a warm afternoon.
3. Plan
Sculptures come from some deep place, the process managed by a tense mix of prior planning and ad-hoc decision-making. Planning is another skill that improves with this practice-that-isn't. I can visualize more complex sculptures now than I could last year. In the last year the sculptures have taken on a flowing presence that makes earlier ones look stiff.
For today's piece I had an idea for multiple layers of thin panels with small arabesque designs in them. Fitting all of that into a 21-inch cylinder will be a trick. All I have to do is make them thin enough.
Here I'm building on recent learnings. Things that look thin can be held up by hidden beams or other structure. A thin element by itself is very unstable, but with a stiffening element behind it becomes much stronger.
So, today's effort focuses on bubble-shapes springing from the core, light and airy, with outside detail contrasting with both the detail in the inside and some smooth panels outside. With careful engineering the detail can be carried all the way to the sculpture's bottom.
4. Making It
There's not much to do while packing sand. It's a well-practiced routine. Layer by layer the sand builds inside the form and my mind wanders.
Call me a guided pinball. I don't really know where I'm going but I bounce off of some things and am attracted by others. I tend to be a pragmatic opportunist. My mind turns to Until Uru and the people I've met there, people who make a priority of going to this community that exists mainly in our minds but built around the Cyan infrastructure. Some of it has to be built. The rest, as Yeesha says in Uru, grows.
It grows from the actions of the residents. Each of us affects others. You'd think that in a low-bandwidth communication scheme detail would get lost but it's somehow still there, for those who choose to pick it up.
In face-to-face communication I tend to run at a disadvantage because I want to think about what people say. This makes me slow; the conversation moves onward before I'm ready to respond. I spend a lot of time listening. In Until Uru everyone has to slow down, and words remain on the screen to be re-read. I'm on an equal footing at last.
Something like two hours later, barring time taken for a few conversations with curious passers-by, the form is as full as it's going to get. I do the usual utility things while I can. Once I've started carving I can't leave the sculpture, and my friend Rich is unable to be here.
Carving starts on the north side with the long bulge that's part of the plan. Inside of that, on the west, I start the cut that would have become the large lower cavity, but this gets derailed by other ideas at the top. This is typical. What fun is carving to a complete plan? I'm only partly an engineer.
I end up balancing the lower north bulge with one on the south side near the top. The sculpture takes on an odd sort of symmetry, with similar east and west aspects but it's skewed from one side to the other. There's lots of space in there, so I carve the intended detail up there and leave the bottom more solid.
Except I finally wake up and realize I can still do part of what I wanted there. Delicately I cut back behind the curtain wall on the west. Then I carve the curtain into a set of curves reminiscent of Kadish Tolesa's circles.
As has become typical, clean-up is a real problem. I don't have brushes small enough to get into many of the places I've carved, and the sheer amount of detail means it'd take all day to do a proper job of it. I get it as good as I can with the day's dwindling energy reserve and then sign it. Done. And it didn't explode.
I'm still worried about longevity. My new high-zoot sprayer works well when it works, but it depends on an O-ring to seal the top and this O-ring has been cut by the seat. No pressure. No spray, on a day that was warm and even though cooling is still dry. Water holds the sculpture together. I hurriedly photograph it and it stays intact.
5. Aftermath
I really should mount the wide-angle lens, but the big camera's batter is finally flat. I shoot some details with the "little" Powershot (I tried to give it to Rich but he said it was too big; he refuses to use the "big" camera) and then pack up. I'm done.
At home, there's a message from Nate. "Tradition." That's all he has to say. There's barely time to take a shower. Killer Shrimp is better without the sand.
And there's always time for Until Uru. I link in to find out what's going on. Supergram and Old Man are in the UO neighborhood, so I head there and find lots of activity. People linking in and out, Old Man in his usual spot. When he asks me how I'm doing I say "I feel as if I've been run over by a truck, but that's typical."
"How did it go today?" I'd told him yesterday I was sculpting.
"Very well, thanks. It's quite a piece."
"Did you get pictures?" Supergram asks.
"Yes."
"Are you going to post them?"
"Certainly."
Now, this was a nice friendly group. When the phone rang I answered, and when it turned out to be a friend I told the folks on-line that I'd be back in a while and parked my avatar. Right there in plain sight. Then I saw an administrator link in. Nothing for it but to watch. I'm toast.
"How do you feel?" Larry asked on the phone. "Big truck or little?"
He knows about post-sculptural syndrome. "Medium-sized. How'd you know?"
"I had a delivery out here and decided to walk the beach. And here was the sculpture. Seems to be about 80% complete."
"It was complete when I left."
"Yes, I guessed. You don't sign them unless they're complete."
"Right."
On the screen I watch Drakmyth. Yep. He has spotted me. Parked avatars take on a head-down, seated position that's unique. Soon there's a cordon of cones surrounding my helpless, harmless avatar.
"What fell off? That big balloon part on the south?"
"No, something on the north."
"I thought that was stable. Could have been vandals."
"I don't know. Right now there's a man guarding it while his wife goes off to get her camera."
Drak extrudes the cones upward out of sight. I'm in a prison of orange bars. Fear the power of the Shahr A'hdmin.
"Well, I'm back at my car. I'll talk to you later."
"OK. Have fun."
"Good night."
He hangs up. What do I do now?
Well, face the music. I take the avatar out of park and stand up. I'm greeted with catcalls and the usual "wb" that means welcome back.
"What happened to me? Who let Drak in here?"
I try skydiving to get over the cones, but they go all the way to the cavern roof. Supergram tries to find the upper limit but can't get there. My only alternative to staying is to idiot-Relto out. There's no point in playing on Drak's mercy. But tonight he is relaxed. After a few minutes he removes the bars and I can run free.
Then I hear Nate honking. "I have to go, folks. My dinner friends are here."
"Have a good dinner, Ktahdn."
"Thanks."
After dinner I link back in. They're still at. We talk about art, community and creativity after Jeruth links in, seated on the table that Drakmyth made from a pumpkin and some cones. I stay up far too late, but at least I'm doing something other than tossing in bed. After sculptures I can't sleep. The night becomes quiet around me as the conversation goes on.
Written 2005 June 18
# © 2005 by Larry @ 
