4:16 am - sand sculpture

My son was a few months old when I made this sand sculpture. If you are a parent yourself you will know how all-consuming it is. Even when people tell you it will be a life-changing experience, in the back of your mind you will be thinking, It's just a baby I'll rear it between all the other stuff I do. Wake up! there will be no time for other stuff. Life will never be the same again. The you in you will be no more and strangely you will be happy, tired but happy to make all these changes for this little creature

Keeping a breast of things

Clodagh had hoped that nursing Fintan would be a breeze and that mother nature would make it easy. No such luck. It was a few months of infections, blockages and pain. It was not the beautiful, relaxing experience that we had thought. Finally, a lactation specialist we employed said that Clodagh had done all she could and that for the sake of her own well being we should find a better way. So every mealtime Clodagh would express with a pump and I would bottle it into him. Letting Clodagh rest as much as she could while I feed the critter.

To keep bread on our table I also needed to work. Lactation specialists aren't cheap and neither are nappies. Our annual Dublin Castle sand sculpture project was getting close and even though I had fit in all the work to organise it with my friend Niall. I had no clue of what to make.

It was the night before carving and all through the house, nothing was stirring except for Fintan suckling his bottle. It was the wee small hours, Clodagh was sleeping and I still had no idea what to make.

Emotional States

The Theme was 'Emotion States'. We like to give ourselves a theme that we can take for a long walk and explore what it means personally to us. As I sat there with our baby in my arms, falling in and out of consciousness and him starring up at me as alert as ever. It came to me, this moment would be my sculpture. I took a visual snapshot and checked the time for a title. This was and would be my Emotional state.

I loved the way his little hands held my fingers as he was steering the proceeding. He knew I was on the verge of sleep and didn't trust me to hold the bottle properly. Wind can be a terrible end to a perfect meal, he was not taking any chances.

He was so small but, perfect in every way. The contrast between his smooth skin and my gnarly hands was something I wanted to capture. I tried to think would the larger than life forms translate to sand. I wanted to supersize this moment as it was all that there was in my life, this connection between me and my son at that very moment. Love creates blinkers and I wanted to create focus cutting out the rest of the world.

Details aren't details, they make the product.

We had bought special bottles for feeding that were supposed to help reduce swallowing air and colic, something that Fintan was suffering from. I marvelled at the design all the way down to the lettering on the base.

It was going to be a simple sculpture in lots of respects but a very personal Emotional snapshot of how I felt at that moment. Now I needed to get some sleep so I could be up bright and early to make it. Clodagh would bottle feed Fintan with the supplies we had stored in the freezer so I could go back to work.

We had two other sculptures in the castle that year. One by Niall and one by English carver Nicola Wood. I will do another post someday to document these. I liked how the exhibition looked from a distance and revealed more detail as you got closer.

alt

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.