Gift of the gab - sand sculpture

Us Irish are well known for their storytelling and eloquence. The amount of great authors and songwriters we have produced is great evidence of that. It is like the fertile soil has soaked right up into our gobs making us a very chatty bunch. I would really wish my posts could be shorter but once I started there is no stopping me. The flood gates open and I go on and on and on and on... So, you will have to forgive me. It's beyond my control. Now, whereas I may talk a lot of nonsense, in general, the Irish are known for their Gift of the Gab or 'solabharthact' as we say in Irish. Our storytelling tradition dates back to long before paper or even blogging was invented.

Always look on the bright side of life

After finishing my Character Building sculpture for the 2013 Dublin sand sculpture exhibition there was still some gas left in the tank and one other block to carve. So, Niall Magee and myself decided to take one side each and make another set of sculptures. I decided I wanted to do something very different and in some way, celebrate our jiber jabber.

After the major recession, Ireland and the rest of the world had after 2008 we felt that we had lost part of our identity and were moping around with no pride in ourselves. Each sculpture in this exhibition was a reflection of what we were proud of about being Irish. Hence the theme ' The bright side'. We didn't want to approach it in a nationalist way. Just a personal expression of what each of the carvers thought was a good aspect of Irish culture and society.

I had just seen a video of Samuel Becketts 'Not I' Performed by Lisa Dwan and thought this is so Us. It was mesmerizing to see and hear all the different sounds and mouth movements that were possible. My idea was to create a simple Iconic image and in a way, let it speak for itself.

Samuel Beckett's Not I Performed by Lisa Dwan (excerpt)

Each of the mouths I made was a great carving lesson in and of itself I had a little makeup mirror on hand and held each expression while carving. I think the audience thought there was something wrong with me.

I wanted each one to be of a different personality and in a frozen moment of a conversation so they were all changed to make them look like different people and not just me pulling faces.

When all joined together they created a wall of sound that was a bit freaky. The sand was wonderfully well behaved for doing the details.

I had good feedback from the public about the sculpture and even had an Italian Linguist who was on holidays in Dublin contact me about using it as an image for a book he was writing.

Looking at the main image from this post now I was thinking that maybe it could be a good starting point for my foray into NFTs. What do you guys think? Is this something I should look into?

Irony of ironies

This is one of my shortest posts in a long time and it is the one about talking! I suppose the sculpture really does speak for itself.