Murlough Reserve - sand sculpture
This will be a short post because I don't have much to say about this pile of sand which resembles a birthday cake. Maybe I will just bulk this post out with stuff that has nothing to do with the sculpture just to feel like I have shared something of worth.
Happy birthday
But first a little about this yoke I made up in the North of Ireland for the National Trust in the car park of a nature reserve at Murlough. I had been asked to come up and make a birthday cake to celebrate the 50 years the trust had been caring for the place of natural beauty. I was to make a quick cake-like thingy and then go to the beach with members of the trust and do some workshops with them.
I didn't design the sculpture and because the day was as long as it was I rushed the piece just so I could set up on the beach and keep energy for that. I had arrived the evening before and compacted the sand into plastic forms, I finished at dusk and then retired to a hotel for the night. Up again at first light and got to work before sun rise. The cake took a few hours to get to this unsatisfactory point. I had chosen some plants and animals from the area to decorate the cake with and fighting with the sand all the way. This is what I came up with. I'll say no more.
I worked in the carpark so as not to bring foreign sand into the reserve. This would have been bad for the environment as mixing sands from different places can change the ecology.
A list workshops
The workshops were a bit of fun but I don't have any images from them. It was comical as nobody was dressed for the occasion as men in suits and women in high heels tried to form simple designs on a very windy beach.
Some were really into it while others were wondering what the hell they had signed up for. They looked wind-swept and tired after their ordeal. I was just doing the gig and trying to make the best of a very odd situation.
It is a beautiful place with little sign of civilisation once you are on the beach. It is nice that it is left to nature and can be a nice place to visit if you are ever up that way.
I promise that my next share will be something nicer.
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Nice sculpture
Thank you. It's not my best but I want to document everyone in a post.
You know we all set standards for ourselves that are literally impossible to reach while simultaneously not holding the same standards for other people, and that we're our own worst critics. You may not be particularly impressed with this piece for various reasons and while it's not as cool as some of your other pieces, it's still not actually that terrible XD
Though I do want to know, what was done with the sand afterwards seeing as you went out of your way not to track it into the reserve?
I...were they not told that they were going to a beach? Too lazy to change because they were only going to be popping out quickly? Whut?!
I know you are right and in in some ways, I think it is good to be your own most critical critic. It doesn't really bother me that some of my work looks like a pigs ear as long as there has been some learning done.
We got the council to come and remove the sand the next day. They would recycle it into something useful. I have worked on the beach with foreign sand but kept it separate in its own little sandbox then took every grain away. In someplace they actually bring sand to the beach to help stop erosion which I am sure is not good for the ecology but, I am not going to tell other countries how to run their beaches
I don't think it's bad as such to be your own worst critic, I only push back to remind people that even if something looks terrible to them it may not look terrible to other people (and in this way I can constantly remind myself too).
Hopefully they weighed up the balance shifting pros and cons with the erosion pros and cons, though I have a feeling most people won't realise that there's different types of sand at all never mind that it could affect anything. Like I'm one of the freakshows that might notice the sand is different in terms of colour and coarseness and I only academically know that different types of sand and dirt can introduce different biotas and/or problems if moved to a different area because I was doing Biological Science at uni once upon a time, but I don't think that would ever occur to me if I hadn't done that because "just sand".