[ Prep Work ]  Sculpting day #  [ 1 ]  [ 2 ]  [ 3 ]  [ 4 ]  [ 5 ]  [ 6 ]  [ 7 ]  [ 8 ]  [ 9 ]  [ Finished Pieces ]  [ Misc. Images ]

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Start with an overall scope of the project -including the theme and at least a rough  idea about the individual sculpture designs. These aspects may be influenced, and are ultimately determined by time constraints, budget and available space & materials. This juggling act is usually performed by the producers and the director together, if they are not indeed the same person. Whatever you come up with, when planning a sand sculpture project that you want to have remain intact & on display for an extended period of time,  it's a good idea to have a tent. This is useful for security, and protection against the elements. When you get to the nuts and bolts of actually designing the show in detail, make a floor plan configuration that will accommodate all the sculptures you wish to create, in a way that efficiently uses the available space & materials & is esthetically pleasing. For this, your best bet would be to charge a guy like... ...Damon Farmer  of Shadetree Studio with the task. (I do anyway, often. & he always delivers!)  I like a mono directional traffic flow, featuring sculptures arrayed in a sequential order, illustrating a particular story. Real or imagined.  But you can be as creative as you like in how you present your show. A free range space with scattered sculptures of various or freely interpreted themes is also a way to approach the presentation. Really, the sky is the limit. ...Then, if you are not on a beach (and very many great sand shows are not) you're gonna need a bunch of trucks full of sand to be delivered. The sculpting quality of the material is really important. High quality sculpting sand allows for good quality sculpture. Bad sand is limiting and depending on just how bad it is, it may result in bad sculpture. No matter how talented the hands working in it, are.  (I an not sure, but it may be this very aspect of sand sculpture that led someone years ago to coin the phrase, "Garbage in = garbage out")    You CAN simply dump raw piles of sand in places where you want to have the sculptures made, ands let the artists just "have at it" so to speak.   That's done at some events today, and there's nothing really wrong with that either. It is what it is. In such cases, the artists usually get to create whatever they want as best they may with the sand & time that's available. This can be an effective & low budget means of producing a sand show. Some major contests are even done this way currently. But we don't do things that way in Jesolo. What we offer is a more elaborate, planned and coordinated- or unified (directed) show. In presenting our show we utilize "Pound-ups"    In the majority of pro class exhibitions (and some of the contests being produced today) a common method of realizing the finished art is to provide the artists with pre made blocks of densely compacted sand. We provide these pre made blocks of compacted sand for our shows here in Jesolo, from which the artists create the amazing sculptures. We call these engineered configurations of ram-packed sand in forms "Pound-Ups."  Below is an example of one that was made in a rectangular shape of consecutively smaller (in perimeter) wooden  frames, filled to capacity resulting in a generally pyramidal final configuration.  In this example the wooden  forms are each 50 centimeters tall. In this example you can see 7 levels, for or an overall height of 3.5 meters. This completed pound-up would weigh in at about about 20 tons. Some poundups may be dozens of  levels tall & weigh hundreds (or thousands) of tons.  Pound-ups can be configured to virtually any shape and size that you can think of. Customizing the pound-up to best fit the intended sculpture design is useful and conserves material, time and sculpting energy. Making the pound-ups can be labor intensive and time consuming, but the benefit is that you can have really cool and often (but not always) much more interesting sculptures made from them, than is possible using only "soft sculpture" techniques, or just piles of loose sand. To make pound-ups though, especially if you are making big ones, or lots of them, You really want to have some heavy equipment and a team of laborers at your disposal: An excavator,     a Bobcat (or other loader)  Along with a good water supply, some  jumping -jack compactors & skilled operators. All these things are most helpful to achieving the best effect and end result in making a good pound-up fast. But you can do a small one by yourself, on the beach using  just a 5-gallon bucket with the bottom cut out of it, in just a few minutes.

It is good to know before you begin, and if you have DO have a tent, that you need to be able to get your equipment, including trucks, excavator/loader & bobcat inside the tent, and be able to operate them with room to move, and still be able to fill all your forms for all he various pound-ups you are planning.  For this, find yourself a genius and technical wizard like this guy. Gianni Butan -Cappo di Sabbia Assemble the pound-up frames (forms) in a way that makes it fairly easy to disassembled them later. When filling each level of the pound-up, we compact short lifts of wet sand until the frame form level is full, then we stack another on top of the previous one, continue with more sand & water, until the whole thing is one big solid block...  ...Then make another one, & another, etc. until all pound-ups you need for your show are complete. Then go relax for a while.

Sometimes the Jumping -jack compactors exert so much force it results in what we call a "blow-out." Repair it as best you can, (here we just wired it together) and press onward and upward, regardless (pun fully intended). Banding straps are quite helpful here, but they are not required. A blow-out may be ugly, but at least you know the sand  is packed really solid. The forms are removed later, one whole layer at a time (or more, depending on your desire/need)  from the top down.   Thus exposing the the hard packed sand inside. In this way, the sculpture is carved to it's finished state in distinct stages from the top down. You need to be able to visualize your completed work well before it is done, or in most cases, before it is even begun.

Now you are ready to bring in the pros from Dover (the team of master sand sculptors from all over) and watch the sand fly!

[ Prep Work ]  Sculpting day #  [ 1 ]  [ 2 ]  [ 3 ]  [ 4 ]  [ 5 ]  [ 6 ]  [ 7 ]  [ 8 ]  [ 9 ]  [ Finished Pieces ]  [ Misc. Images ]

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Another fine exhibition of world class sand sculpture by the Sultans of Sand Worldwide. This event is produced as ever, by the City of Jesolo, in Venice, Italy.  

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