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You too can build a house on the beach. Or a mansion. Or a castle for that
matter. All it takes, according to Bert Adams, is a square of sand, a bucket
and a lot of imagination. Sand sculpting has been his fascination since
1984, when as a high school student in Carmel, California, he and his brother
entered a sand sculpture contest. The theme was "150 Years of American Architecture,"
he recalls. " We figured everybody who entered would build structures like
log cabins and skyscrapers. So I told my brother we should do something
different -- like a parking lot. We made a fiberglass mold in the shape
of a row of cars and when we finished, our 'lot' had 125 cars in it." Their
originality won them the top prize, and Bert got seriously bitten by the
sand sculpture bug. He obtained a listing of similar contests in the area
and kept right on sculpting. "It isn't easy if you want to do it right,
you know," Bert says. "You have to get up early, haul water like a mule
and pack sand like crazy to achieve the results of your plan." He did not
add that the workers create their masterpieces on a hot beach with little
or no shade. When he was starting out, Bert says he kept running into another
young man at most of the contests. They joined forces on a plan to make
a gigantic chess set with 6-foot kings and 4-foot pawns. "Before we built
it, we tried to get a company to sponsor it at the world-famous contest
in Capitola (Calif.). But the organizers there said 'no commercials' so
we set up our own contest in Santa Cruz. It's a great way for any school,
church group or other charitable cause to earn money." Meanwhile, Bert had
earned a degree in electronic engineering from Cal Poly and had gone to
work for Intel. Three years ago, however, he converted his weekend pastime
to a full-time career. "I quit corporate America," he says. "I called in
well." In case you're wondering how anyone can make a living creating short-lived
fantasies in sand, the man who did it says there are three |
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ways: "You can be a sand gypsy and travel around the country 40 weeks a
year making sculptures for state fairs and shopping malls; or if you're
really good, you can enter contests and keep winning top prize money; or
you can organize contests." Last year Bert -- who seems to have a penchant
for carving things -- won a free trip to Mazatlan as a prize in (of all
things) a Spam carving contest in Seattle. "I really liked it here," he
says, "but as a visitor, there wasn't much to do but sit and drink, and
I'm not good at either. So I got some buckets and started making things
on the beach. I didn't have any tools but some sticks I found. Lots of people
stopped to look, to talk, to take pictures. Hmmmmm . . . there are more
than 300 contests in the U.S. and Canada. Why not one here in Mazatlan?
"When I got home I checked the Internet and found that there was only one
other contest in all of Mexico, and that's in Acapulco. So I came back this
year during what for me is an inactive time and started talking up the possibilities.
With the help of the Pacific Pearl and other sponsors we've rounded up,
we have the makings of a contest which can grow in quality and size with
every passing year." So Bert Adams became the chief consultant for Mazatlan's
first (please pardon the pun) Michael-Sand-Gelo Sand Sculpture Contest,
which was held in mid-January in front of Chili Pepper's restaurant on the
beach. He hopes it will become an annual event for personal as well as professional
reasons. As he puts it, "I'd love to have an excuse to come here promoting
sand art in Mazatlan." There is one last point in all this. How in the world
can a person get so enthused about spending time and energy to create something
so temporary, so fleeting, so ephemeral? The answer bears thinking about.
"Sand sculpture is a performance art, it's about process, not ownership.
Nobody cries when the song ends, when the curtain comes down. You buy a
rose to enjoy the beauty of the moment. To repeat the best quotation on
the subject, art is never finished, it is only abandoned.' " |
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