Over the years I have helped create many sand nativity scenes around this time of year. I am actually going to La Pineda, Catalonia next week to make another one. I didn't post this one yet to my blog as I thought it was too seasonal and was waiting till around Christmas time to post them all but for me everyday is Christmas day so here we go.
In some ways it was a traditional crib we made in 2001 in La Pienda but it was already showing the signs that we were bored of the format and to make it interesting for ourselves we wanted to start deconstructing what a nativity was and what it meant to us.
Not another sand nativity
Around the Mediterranean coast there are many sand nativities all in the traditional style but this year we started sowing the seeds of what we would do each year up to today. As long as we had some recognisable figures the design could be thrown open to artist interpretation. Fergus Mulvany and Kirsten Anderson from Denmark made this style copy of Catalonian sculptor Josep Maria Subirachs to represent the three kings
I worked on the star and the surrounding landscape while others made the central figures. The star had a light in it as did the rest of the sculpture so that it could be seen at night.
Peter Busch, Denmark and Nuria Vallverdu, Catalonia made the Mary, joseph and jesus characters which were only really viewable through the hole in the front of the sculpture.
@stijgerart made this nice negative carving of some naked lads following the star, which I think was the nicest element.
Overall i didn't really like the sculpture as I think it was too much of a montage of everyone doing very different things with not much of a connection between anything. As I said I look on this as a seed of what was to come so stay tuned if you want to know how crazy our ideas got.
And Happy Christmas in case I forget to say it closer to the time.
Ps
Thanks for reading. I use Steem to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, among other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Steem blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.
A very brief history of sculpture - sand sculpture
Wet and dry - sand sculpture
The three Norns - sand sculpture
I hope you'll join me again soon.
@ammonite
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Hello @ammonite, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!