While I have never been to Revere Beach, I look forward each year to photos of the amazing sand sculptures from a competition that brings people from throughout the world to this location just north of Boston.
Clik here to view.
Adding to the enjoyment of the Revere Beach International Sand-Sculpting Festival are longtime sand-sculptors Dan Doubleday and Meredith Corson-Doubleday, who bring the event to life, especially for distant viewers, with their expert commentary on all the pieces. I also appreciated the slide show created by professional photographer Greg Cook on his Wonderland website.
The sand sculptures are evaluated using four categories: (1) degree of difficulty, (2) originality and creativity, (3) quality of sculpting, and (4) overall visual impact.
In the two videos on this page, Dan and Meredith conduct their fourth-day “walkthrough” together, as the sand sculptures take on their final forms. At the time that Dan and Meredith recorded their commentary, they did not know who the winners would be, so I would like to add some help with that:
Day Four Walkthrough, sculptures 8-15 (first video)
The video opens with a sculpture created by Tacoma’s Sue McGrew called “Eye of the Tiger.” It reflects Sue’s new-found love of boxing. The work is impressive, although Sue did not place at Revere Beach this time around.
At 4:24 in the video, we see “Shell-ter” by Jonathan “Jobi” Bouchard of Montreal, Canada, the second-place winner in the competition. It is his interpretation of what it means to be homeless and forced to find a place to stay while living on the streets.
At 8:12 is a sculpture by Dan Belcher of St. Louis, who took fifth place with “Trance,” showing two isolated eyes staring at a person. Dan pointed out the tall, heavy, and nearly vertical edge to the piece, which shows sort of an engineering ability to the craft.
Clik here to view.
Photo: Revere Beach Partnership
The winning sculpture, by Mélineige Beauregard, also of Montreal, appears at 11:45 in the first video. She mentions in the awards ceremony that her piece, titled “Nest,” reflects the feeling of “love and shelter” that she is feeling in her new relationship. She sort of demonstrates in the sculptors’ video at 4:14.
Also in the first video, at 12:41, is the third-place winner, Ilya Filimontse of Russia with his impressive piece “Guardian Angels.” You can see a portion of the sculpture in a photo on this page, but go to Greg Cook’s photos to see the full thing, including the back. The wings are amazingly fragile, as Dan and Meredith point out, and early in the production one wing partially collapsed and had to be rebuilt. There is some special meaning to the mismatched wings, as Ilya points out in the sculptors’ video at 5:20.
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Day Four Walkthrough,
sculptures 1-7 (second video)
At 1:07 in the second video, we see the People’s Choice winner Sudarsan Pattnaik of india. It’s a powerful image of ocean pollution with the message “Save our oceans; stop plastic pollution.”
The always-intricate Sculptors’ Choice award comes up at 2:26 with Belgium native Enguerrand “Mac” David’s piece about Notre-Dame Cathedral.
At 8:56, we see the fourth-place sculpture, “An Ode to Apathy”
by Abe Waterman of Prince Edward Island, Canada. This was my
personal favorite, because Abe was doing something with colored
sand that I have never seen before. The technique works perfectly
to distinguish the continents from the oceans as the Earth breaks
apart. Meanwhile, a human observer sits and eats his popcorn as he
watches it happenen.
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Just added this morning are two sculptors’ videos, in which the artists present their work in the same order as their plots and what was presented by Dan and Meredith. They present many thoughtful and amusing insights. One video shows plots 8-15. The other shows plots 1-7.
A video of the awards ceremony includes an introduction of the sculptors and some additional commentary. (You can skip the first 24 minutes, which just shows people milling around without sound.) Other related videos can be seen on the RevereTV Channel on YouTube.
Other competitions
It appears to be a good year for Mélineige Beauregard, who took first place in June at the Hampton Beach Master Sand Sculpting Contest in New Hampshire. Her piece in that competition is called “Breaking Out,” and you only get the full impact back looking at the front and then the back, as shown in the image on this page.
Clik here to view.
Photo: Hampton Beach Village District
For other photos at the Hampton Beach event, see the slideshow at the bottom of the website for the Hampton Beach Village District or look at the official Facebook page.
By the way, Sue McGrew will build a sand sculpture at Sammamish City Hall next month as part of the Sammamish Party of the Plateau celebration. The 16 tons of sand will be dropped off on Monday, Aug. 12, and she will work on the sculpture until the following Thursday. The event is sponsored by the Sammamish Arts Commission.
Other upcoming events include:
- The U.S. Sand Sculpting Challenge and Dimensional Art Exposition, Aug 31-Sept 2, San Diego.
- The International Sand Sculpting Championship at Virginia Beach Neptune Festival, Sept. 27-30.
- Siesta Key Crystal Classic International Sand Sculpting Festival, Nov. 15-18, Siesta Key, Fla.
