SCULPTURE in SAND and SNOW

Not only was the sculpture formed from radically different media. It also emerged from radically different environments. Rockaway is a barrier island formed in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene times. It’s all sand and flat, and one has difficulty envisioning the Wisconsin glacier, whose outwash had created it.   The tidal flats of Anchorage’s Knik Arm and Ship Creek were formed much later by retreating glaciers; mountains still surround the area,  and the town of Girdwood, a short drive up the Turnagain Arm from Anchorage, still is surrounded today by seven permanent glaciers.

Today, the sand remains on Rockaway Beach, but Hurricane Sandy has demolished its wooden boardwalk.  The city is rushing to build a new one by the summer–this time of concrete–but the task is enormous and terribly disruptive.   Anchorage was spared any such natural disasters, although its snowfall for this year was no match for the record total of 134.5″ that fell last year.

Here we see the actual scenes of the two sculpture competitions. In the top photograph, work is in progress at Rockaway.  The bottom photograph shows Ship Creek, which separates the city of Anchorage from its port, where the finished sculptures were judged on the morning before we arrived and discovered them.

Sand sculpture was not the only art to be found on the sands of Rockaway beach.  Here, the entire back of a young woman is covered with a Japanese-inspired tattoo consisting of two fish and a tentacled sea creature with claws.

But then, even in the Alaskan winter, the art of the tattoo can be found, if a bit less ostentatiously.  Here, our waitress, Chrystal, kindly agreed to allow me to take a picture of the visible section of her body art.   She works at the Snow City Cafe, by the way, and this is definitely the hip place to go for breakfast or lunch in Anchorage.

Sculpting in sand offers the option of piling it up before removing and modelling it, or just digging down, as the group under Tom Sachs was doing.

The concept of a sandcastle generally implies something architectural, castle-like, as most of us have constructed at some point in our beach-going lives.  But the sculptural product may just as well lean towards abstraction or symbolic forms, as in this work by Wass & Greenberg.

Here, the castle is no more than a vestigial capping element, a small, Mesoamerican pyramid atop these abstracted faces.  The title, What the Sand Told Us, alludes to that long-standing dialogue  that artists have with their material, going back at least to Michelangelo and his references to releasing the figure from the stone that imprisoned it.

A similar work of abstraction, also composed of faces, characterizes this snow sculpture by the Snow Cats.  Ravens and Bears are often depicted on native totem poles, and in Inuit myth the former even made the world and is a curious trickster, while the latter was the teacher of man, imparting the skills of survival, of hunting and gathering.

Of all the sculptures, the most abstract was this elegant piece by William Lamson.  Although in an interview he cites a gravel cylinder that he saw in a Japanese temple, it seems to me that his sculpture bears a much closer resemblance to one of the projects of that famous late 18th-century French Revolutionary architect, Étienne-Louis Boullée (see below).

Other works which embrace the theme of historic architecture are Marie Lorenz’s Colosseum and Shelter Serra’s Neuschwanstein.  

In regard to the former, I wish that I had stayed around to see how Marie managed to remove herself from the center before the judging.  She did say that she chose the Colosseum because it seemed safer to “start with a ruin;” and, as we can see, she and her friends wore togas for the judging.

As to the latter, here we come closest to the iconic sandcastle, even as its scale pales in comparison to many of the other sculptures.  Neuschwanstein (see below) is that famous medieval revival castle of the 19th-century built for Ludwig II of Bavaria.

The snow sculptors of Anchorage showed little interest in the iconic architecture of past epochs. What examples I found of snow architecture were clearly of less sophisticated forms.

In the first photograph (above) we see an “adobe” wall that signifies the prison of that Ol’ Bull & Chain, but it is the sculpture of the Bull that is its real tour de force.  This, by the way, won first place among the division featuring 3-member teams.

In the case of Alaska Loves Their Radio (below) a transmission tower for KNBA radio sits adjacent to and serves a simple outhouse.   Architecture here is all about function!

Whimsy plays a major role in this work of a moose with binoculars searching for his prey.  His rifle, equipped with a scope, lies before him on the ground, while a man with a backpack peers out from behind a snow-laden spruce tree.  Is man assisting the moose, or is he the hunted one?   

This received second place in the Family/Corporate Division.

Whimsy also played a role in this sculpture by Jen DeNike, simply as a consequence of its title, She Was Dreaming of Castles in the Sand.  A bikini-clad woman, asleep in the sand, reaches out with her right hand to touch the castle of which she dreams. The team of two also dressed for the occasion with filmy, full-length capes, on which the title of the sculpture could be read.

Jon Eric Thompson won second place in the solo division with his six-figure extravaganza, Jesus Is Crucified.   I like the way the haloes, as transparent discs of ice, become ethereal in the sunlight.

Jennifer Catron and Paul Outlaw, who regularly work as an artistic team, brought in some friends, all dressed in American flag bathing suits, and walked away with the gold prize at Rockaway. This piece may need some explaining, as it is an interactive sculpture.  The five of them sit at different heights, three on raised platforms, and become part of an elaborate water fountain. Equipped with gallon jugs and plastic straws, they take in water and then spout it back out–sometimes at the passing crowd.

I surmise that they are emulating some Roman Baroque fountain, such as Bernini’s Fontana del Tritone (see below).

The winner of the CGI Snow Sculpture Competition for 2013 in the Family/Corporate Division was this work, Orca Attack.  The Orca, or killer whale, has metamorphosed into a bomb-laden fighter jet. It is being guided into position, either for take-off or after landing. 

Among the indigenous cultures of the north, the Orca is seen both as merciless killer and as embodiment of the soul of a human. In fact, in Haida myth Orcas take on human form when submerged and the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska regard the Orca as the custodian of the sea.

That’s it for this week.  No politics, just a little fun in the sun…and the sand…and the snow.