Framed Wave

Framed Wave, originally uploaded by ...escher....

I should sub title this one "Hunt for Orange Stick." It's not quite as exciting as "Hunt for Red October" and doesn't involve submarines but I wouldn't be surprised if someone made a Hollywood movie out of it.

I've not done any beach art for a while and when I woke up this morning I immediately thought "head to the coast."

The tide was due in at 12.15 and darkness and bad weather due later at 4.00pm so time was going to be short.

We arrived at 11.50, according to the clock in the car, so I expected the tide to be going out just as we got set up.

I fancied doing a sculpture similar to this but with the tide up I didn't have access to the sand. I collected rocks and started assembling them on a flat slab while I waited for the tide to recede.

But the thing was it didn't, it carried on getting higher and higher.

A 10 watt bulb lit up in my head - I still hadn't reset the clock in the car since the end of British summertime and there would be another hour before the tide would head back!

So I thought I would have to change tack and build it on the slab instead of in the sand and hope that the tide would reveal the sand in time to fill the centre and leave enough light for a photo.

But it is often the case that what you expect to be easy turns out to be the hard bit, the frame came together reasonably quickly so I set off to comb the beach for suitable driftwood to make the framed tree. I looked and looked and looked and not a single piece of wood was shapely enough and I was reminded of how I built the original and how it was all based around the stick I found to go into the centre.

After spending a long time looking I had noticed how the driftwood was lots of different colours. Black, brown, white, green and orange - so I changed tack and thought I would show off the different colours I had found.

I started from the bottom and worked my way up and everything seemed to be going well until I got to the very last stick needed to finish it. It needed to be quite long and orange and so the "Hunt for the Orange Stick" begun.

I swear to god there was only one vaguely orange stick that was long enough and it took me hours to find it and whats more it was bent!

I gently tried to straighten it out and the obvious thing happened, it snapped! Curses!

I looked again but there were no more damn orange sticks on that beach! I don't even like bloody orange anyway!

Unhappily I placed the snapped stick at the top and knew that it would have to do and I had learnt more about orange sticks than I ever wanted to know.

Land art lessons learnt today? Don't use orange sticks.