I'm back from my travels of working with sand and snow and am now looking forward to a new year of posting more regularly and maybe even adding other sculpture materal works to Steemit.
I hope you are all having a great Christmas and are enjoying time with your family and loved ones.
For the season that is in it I have decided to share with you a sculpture of a shitting man. ( yes this is very seasonal) just ask anyone in the Republic of Catalonia.
I was asked by my good friend Nuria Vallverdu Villaginis to come to La Pineda in Catalonia to help make a sand nativity. This was in 2000 and 18 years later the Nativity is still going strong but each year with a different theme. Over the years we became very bored of making tradition cribs so began to experiment with making it more modern and with hidden messages, to make it more interesting for the audience but of course also for ourselves. The locals and tourists really enjoy the idea of trying to work out what it's all about and not just being faced with the usual classical sculpture of the holy family, which there are lots of Scattered around the Mediterranean.
This first year we were still quite traditional we had Mary, Joseph and Jesus some a Shepard and animals and of course a man taking a dump behind the stable.
When Nuria asked me to carve it I thought she was joking but for the locals he is as much an integral figure as the baby JC. I shit you not. While I worked on the piece the audience found it as normal as if I had been making the mother of God.
The Caganer is a symbol for fertilising the ground and is in every set of crib figures in these areas. I also had a Lebanese guy tell me that they had the same. Here's a link to find out more about him Wikipooia about the Caganer. There are also some other characters that sometimes make an appearance, the Washer Woman and the Wood Cutter.
Coming from a quite traditionally Catholic country as I do I was a bit uneasy about making this figure but by the end I really enjoyed painstakingly making his poo with gusto. I used a lighter coloured sand for this.
(Do you remember growing up and seeing all of the white dog poo in the streets, maybe it was just the fashion or diet of dogs back then but it stuck with me. )
A newspaper and toilet roll finished off the ensemble. Definitely not my best work (I hope!) but it was a fun project and one I would return to many years to come. Being the longest running carver in it's eighteen years.
The rest of the crib was pretty traditional, as I said. Carved By Fergus Mulvany, Ludo Roders, Caroline St. Olive and Nuria Vallverdu Villaginis. Even though were were still quite amateur at carving it all came together and looked quite nice with the Lights we added. The town folk really loved it and treated us like kings with our own private rooms in a 4 star hotel and brought us out to dinner each night to a different up-market restaurant. These were the golden years of sand sculpture but I still look back with embarrassment at how bad a sculptor I was. I hope over my posts to show you that I got a bit better.
Here's another image which was turned into a Christmas card.
Photo Nuria Vallverdu
Ps
These are great days for Steemit and I hope that into the new year we grow this community together and fix the glitches in the system. Wishing you all a restful time for the remainder of this year and great start to the new one. If you are new to my blog feel free to check out some of my earlier posts and expect more really soon. All comments and questions welcome.
Tools of the trade- sand sculpture
Iglu-Dorf last day
A fascinating folk tradition. The Caganer figure reminds me of the quirky gargoyles and other creatures found around old churches. Great sculpture, too
Yes, it is always amazing to see the strange little characters in the stone work of churches. One time i made a Sheela na Gig which is a quite pornographic figure seen on medieval Irish churchs.
The most unusual Nativity scene I have ever seen. What a post to end 2017. I have to resteem this!
We are meeting on Saturday in town it your around for the usual monthly meetup.
You're going to see a lot of more unusual Nativities in posts to come. I think I made around 15 over the years, each with a different theme.
Yes I am looking forward to Saturday, I'll be in as soon as I can.
Thanks for the resteem.
I know your mother hates the Caganer!
She has no sense of real culture :)
Yeah I do remember the white dog poo, what was up with that?
An artist friend of mine did a painting called "The wanker". He had the same kind of expression, but probably not something you'd put in public these days!
Thanks for reading. Yes, the white dog poo seemed to be much more an 70's thing. Gone are the days.
Pleasure and pain have very similar expressions for some odd reason.
What an amazing talent you have.
Thank you, this is really old and I hope I have improved since then.
Brilliant and very interesting post. I really love sand and ice sculptures.
Thank you, Stay tuned for lots more to come.
Can't wait 😀
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I recently saw some of your work. I am a fan of art and photography and look forward to Following your posts.
Following you now.
@ohicklin
Thank you
These are fantastic. The Mary and Jesus one is so brilliant. Wow!
Thank you and thank you for visiting my older posts.
Distinctive sculpture Greetings
lol that's an unexpected sculpture!
Thanks for your suppport @drakos.
Nice post. Best wishes for the coming New Year!
Thank you and wishing you the best for 2018.
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