The
clear plastic tent (22 x20 meters) is erected on the street in the city
square, Piazza Marconi then we bring in the gas heating components,
which are installed first.
 Here
you see the duct work on the floor inside, and the (blue) gas heater
outside, ready to be lifted off the truck with a crane and placed
inside the gazebo behind the tent.
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The
cherry picker hi-lift comes in handy for many uses in the overall
development process.
 At
5.5 meters tall, the eventual sculpture will be the biggest one yet
created for this event over the last five years.
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Next,
some of the wooden containment forms arrive and start getting erected
in place, and the first truckloads of sand are
delivered.
 A telescoping loader is also required to
get the sand in place.
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If
you look closely at the photo below, you can
see the forms are wired from side to side to keep them from expanding
too
much as they are filled with wet sand which is machine compacted in
layers.
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 Each
of the few layers of sand, mixed with water is machine compacted, or
"whacked" to fill each successive level of wood forms going up. This
very
dense material in the forms, or "in the can" as we say, is now
becoming a bigger and bigger solid block of carving sand.
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As
packing continues, the next set of interlocking wood forms is staged
for the subsequent level.
They are pinned together in a way that
allows for a quick-release later, when carving begins, as they are
removed one entire level at a time from the top down, to expose the
densely packed block of sand, ready for
carving.
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