Floating a Finned Whale - sand sculpture

Nobody wanted to touch this sculpture. It was much bigger than the other piles on display and they had run out of sand to fill all the forms. There was confusion about how exactly it was to be done in the compaction provided and while the other sculptors ran off to choose their more manageable blocks I was left standing there pondering its faith. I had not been to Blockus since 2013 and was hoping to make a big comeback, so, I figured I would take one for the team and challenge myself to put some manners on this bastard pile.

Things that go Schlump in the night

A few months earlier on Blockus strand, a Fin Whale had washed up dead. People were baffled, These mammals were not known to live in this area and to have one show up out of the blue (the big blue), had a lot of Danes scratching their heads.

It was a female and there were no signs of any injury, she was also relatively small at 20 meters, these animals have been known to grow to over 27 so it wasn't old age. People came from all over Denmark to see it before it was finally dissected away to find out what happened.

After the CSI did their investigation, it was discovered that she had died from a virus. How something so small could kill something so large still leaves me in awe.

Now, with the whale gone, the organisers of the sand event wanted to capitalise on the happening and make a sculpture to remember it by, in the hopes that it would keep Blockus on the map for whale watchers. It would also fit in nicely with the overall theme of the exhibition which was animals.

A mammoth task

I could understand why to other sculptors didn't want to tackle this. it would be a lot of work and you would be under the microscope of the locals, making sure you did a good job.

Or course I too had my apprehensions. How the hell could I turn this pile into something worthy of the whale crazed community. Although big it was not big enough. To pay homage to the one that had died she should be a life-sized 20 meters long but, when I stepped it out the compaction was only 15 meters and the height was also too short.

I made a deal with the other carvers that any sand they could spare I would happily take off their hands to make my job even bigger. My first challenge was to shovel as much sand as I could from around the base up on top so that I could at least give her some height and girth. The tail end would have to wait till more sand became available. The back needed the most and I think I added a couple of tonnes by hand as I spent my first two days getting a free workout. Keeping the wooden forms in place allowed me to compact it by foot, although it also meant I needed to throw the sand even higher. The fin needed to go higher still.

Finally, I was ready to get carving and my little camping shovel came into its own. There really wasn't much to come off, just rounding the edges as the figure of the Whale was snug up to the forms edge.

A whale of a job

My biggest concern, however, was that I didn't want the Whale to look like a beached whale. These fantastic beasts don't usually go down to the bottom of the ocean except when they die and I didn't want my sculpture to depict her as the dead Whale she became but the graceful specimen that swims the ocean. Whales float and so I wanted this one to float but how in God's name was I going to float over 50 tonnes of sand.

After putting my thinking cap on and over a joint I came up with an idea. Raise her up by having some light come through underneath. It was so crazy it might just work.

Raising a Whale

I used Kelp and other seaweeds to create trestles that the whale would sit upon. These allowed me to round the form of the body to the underside and have some light peeping through the gaps.

Although the animal was on the sea bed this effect helped raise her up Lazaris style but, I am no Jesus and I always had Newton's voice in the back of my head telling me how far I could push it.

There were as many cut-throughs as I thought were safe and it really added to the effect, especially around the head and tail. In the centre, I was more limited because I just didn't have the height.

When more sand became available I was able to lengthen the tail and get her up to full size. This area, because it was soft packed sand needed to be safer but I really pushed every limit to have light underneath.

On the last day, I had some help to finish the seafloor with rocks, corrals and some other sea life because some other sculptors were finished with their teeny tiny piles. We used every bit of sand we could find to decorate the area and what seemed like an impossible mission at the start turn out to be something quite special and a fitting memorial of Flippy (that was her name)

Whale tank

To finish this story I have this other bit of info from 2017. After the scientists had done their autopsy and did all their other sciencey stuff the worms were let loose on the carcass and eat away all the blubber to reveal the wonderful skeleton of the Whale. This was returned to the Village of Blockus and put on display in the centre. I found it all a bit sad as I had come only to think about this whale as a living, breathing beauty from the deep.

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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.