60 sand carvers from all over the world came to Blankenburge
to carve out an Italian Rennasiance theme. Roger(Vancouver
Island) and Abraham(St Ives....now livingin Goa) and myself
were given "The Coleseum" as a project. We had one side of
a levee of sand (soft pack....not compacted) about 9 ' high
and 35' long. Abe's job was to make all the miniature statues
out of sand. He worked in a covered area nearby (it rained).
Roger and I did all the architecture.......it's not beach sand

after 4 days of carving columns and arches, Abe
brings a statue over.....we slide it into place.
The reddish brown carving sand was
dumped on top of the cheaper grey fill sand.The
grey stuff exposed itself as one can see. We'll
have to patch/replace with the reddish stuff.

In the mean time Laurent wires the top arched
tier for lighting. The wiring had to be done as the
details were carved. Laurent was a busy man.
The sand sculpture park encompassed several acres.

The second tier's architecture
is almost complete. The bad
sand has been dug out but not
yet replaced with the carving
sand(right side).

The bottom row tier is now blocked out and ready to layout the doric style
columns/arches.....we'd already screwed up in that the corinthian ones were to be on
top and ionic in the middle. One person noticed....one of the Italians. I was soon to report to the 20 meter
mountain of hardpack(compacted) sand (seen in the background) to carve Pisa leaning against the right side.

All done with this.........Abe needs to
bring in a few more statues to fill in the
left side of the second tier. He'd
become swamped with all the other
mini statues needed for the other exhibits.

at night

Two lovely Russian carvers, Ludmilla
and Masha (mother and daughter)
from Moscow , relaxing at the end
of the day.

reported to the top of the tallest pound up......to
carve Pisa...carving arches and columns again.

Patricia from from Saskatoon jumped up to help
me after I'd been carving a few days. She's sitting on
top of the forms used to pack the sand. We'd carve down
as far as we could, Laurent came up to install lights, then
the tech crew arrived to pull out the next layer of forms
and the whole process started again.

One of the talented russians sculptors
(Sergey )gives my friend Andy (see sandsculptusa.com) a few pointers about
face carving. The two of them did a
beautiful piece.

Igore (another Russian),
does some repair
to his piece that
became rain damaged.
This guy was an
incredible sculptor.

Kimberly, a dutch graphic designer,
and I worked the last few days on
this little piece of Venice.

carving sponsor logos .........
the last bit of carving before
the park opens