To the moon via the beach (The Moon) - sand sculpture

Where was I? oh yeh! on the beach. Now, it is time to continue the journey to the moon.

In the last post, I wrote about this fun project in Arles, France where I got to create a sand art installation in an Amphitheatre. Working like gladiators in the summer sun we shovelled and formed the sand into a seaside landscape. In this episode, I will take you through the process of evolving it into the surface of the moon.

Teraform

Creating the moon surface was actually a bit easier than the beach. I think we are so used to being on the beach with our work that all the subtleties have made it much more complex in our minds. For the moon, all we have are photos from when they faked the landing so we were pretty sure we could fake it too. (Editors note: I hope they get that this was a joke).

Starting with some big craters and rock formations quickly removed any evidence of the beach. But getting the overall texture of the surface correct was difficult especially when everything we did was trampled on by one of the many artists that wanted to perform on it.

This guy would come out a few times a day wearing a helmet of living bees. When that was happening I usually steered clear as I am allergic to their sting. He had a little cage attached to his head and inside was the queen bee. Before his performance, he would open the hive and all of them would swarm to his head. Not something I could see myself doing for my art.

The eagle has landed

The first photo in this post was of another performer who would also take a walk around dressed as an astronaut. Seeing him on the surface gave me an idea.

Remember Niel Armstrong's famous words ' One small step for man, One giant leap for mankind'? Well, I thought that why not cover the whole surface in footprints. So many that you wouldn't see any. This would make the surface un-uniformly formal (editors note: Now, you've lost them).

So that is what we did we asked a group of Brazillian Performers that had been playing volleyball on our beach to run around the surface everywhere they could except for the craters and slowly but surely the whole thing was dappled to perfection.

It looked best at night, especially when another performer got it into their head to build a big bonfire.

Our work here was complete and the whole project felt like a complete success. I say 'felt like' because not many visitors came to see the 'Happening'. Although the Amphitheatre was open to the public all the time so that people could see what was going on there was never much of an audience.

But for us and the Luma Foundation, it was the best show on earth and for me a really fun week of being creative with some of the best artists I know all the while being treated like a superstar.

Other works

As I said all around the theatre there were differents artists creating different things. Up on the roof were these guys taking a life cast from a model for the whole week with the crazy sounds of a DJ blasted in their ears. I pitied the poor girl sitting there naked in that sunlight but these are the things you must to do for your art.(Editors note: Really?). Yes, Really.

One of the most interesting project for me was one called 'The library is on fire'. These artists were playing with the idea that the books in the library create a consciousness a bit like some sort of AI but without the computers. The guys themselves were fun to hang around with and not as stuck up as most of the other artists.

The main purpose of the whole thing was to create a buzz around the launch of a new art centre in Arles and checking their website all these years later that seems to have been achieved and seems going well.

The whole project was documented very well and we all receive a copy of a book which luma made. It's cool, lots of pictures showing the step by step of the entire project and will hopefully someday become somewhat of a collector's item.

For me, it was so nice to see how the other half lives and be introduced to so many different art heads.

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Ps

Thanks for reading. I use PeakD to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, amongst other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Hive Blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.

To the moon via the beach ( The Beach) - sand sculpture

Sliced Nativity - Sand sculpture

The Dark Knight - ice sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon
@ammonite

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[//]:# (!pinmapple 43.677873 lat 4.630882 long To the moon via the beach (The Moon) - sand sculpture 2012 d3scr)