By Anthony DeMeo IV
Showers rolled over Tybee Island during the majority of Savannah’s 30th annual Sand Arts Festival, but the determination of artists was not stifled by the disagreeing weather.
Quality sculpture was in steady supply along Tybee’s north beach. Kinetic wind sculptures, reliefs, creatures from unwritten Sci-Fi novels and innovative architecture scattered the dunes.
Architecture Through Time was a man-made micro valley with three eras of architecture along the edges. Chris Epps and Steven Fedak, architecture majors, reflected their appreciation for the evolution of building styles.
The progression was Mayan, Victorian and finally modern although most of the modern portion was washed away by rain.
Bridgette Moore and Hannah Goff added their own fashion aesthetic with décor found along the beach. Between the three civilizations stretched two bridges decorated with beach scraps.
Sand Monster was an excellent display of sculptural ingenuity. The powerful face and hands of this sand man were truly surreal. Painting major Capucine Gros explained that his original intention was to make a more realistic rendering of the human form morphing from the sand, but due to time constraints decided to abstract the form into a more horrifying and grotesque figure. This quick thinking led to a first place win in sculpture.
Another couple of students who wanted to simply be referred to as “Bam” created a kinetic contraption that used wind, wheels and bottles to create noise. They called it Growth because it had childhood pictures among other representative trinkets to evoke the process of growth. They explained that a major part of their installation, a serpentine shape made of bottles, shattered on the way to the beach.
Industrial design major Jay Dicenso created Mechanical Bird, a transparent blue bird propelling itself using the breeze from the sea. He conceptualized his wind sculpture while bored at work where he made a box with gears and a crank that would make a bird flap. He then added a wind turbine and scaled it up. All the while his perfunctory bird flapped frantically as the wind picked up. Jay went on to win first place for his Mechanical Bird concept that took flight over the wind sculpture competition.
From the relief section emerged Easter Isle heads, gorgons and other abstract faces. Sarah Le’s Within Turtle Lagoon used a subtractive relief carving first and then later added another turtle inside the relief. The result was an island within a turtle shaped canyon littered with what looked to be tiny lily pads.
The most empowering piece for many was Tim Markwardt’s and Annie Winbray’s Castle Over the Gorge. Their intention was an interactive cliff side Mediterranean palace that would allow people to travel through a well-rendered Bronze Age dwelling. Details such as crushed seashells and the layered Tybee sands created a convincing faux stone surface. The interactive element of this masterpiece was enough to award it first place in the castle competition.
