Thursday, November 7, 2013

Sand Artist At Work



This postcard shows a "Sand Artist at Work" in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The artist and date are unnamed, but it was not difficult to find more information about this artist and his sculpture. I discovered that both were well known. The date is less certain.

The artist's name was James Taylor. He is named and shown with a similar statue in the below article from The Strand Magazine, Volume 33, 1907. This certainly suggests a date of 1907. Thanks to Google, I discovered that this article is actually a copy of the beginning of a longer article that appeared in The Strand Magazine, Volume 18, 1899. Furthermore, sand sculptures like this were less ephemeral than the article implies.


The following is an excerpt from the 1899 article:
The variety of subjects which have sprung from the worker's fertile brain is astonishing. Hardly a thing happens in the world such as the blowing up of the Maine or the death of a noted man but what some reproduction of it may be made with sand. The photographs in this article show how varied Mr Taylor's talents are and how quick he is to seize upon the subject of momentary note for the interest of his countless onlookers. His last subject recently done expressly for this Magazine as shown by the illustration below touches we think the highest he has yet reached in sand art. The beautiful figure on the sand with its flowing drapery is really amazing in the naturalness of its lines. When we consider the haste with which it must have keen made and the material of which it is composed it is certainly a cause of admiration.
The sculpture mentioned in the 1899 article was a recumbent woman in a somewhat different pose without the child. Although Taylor made many different sculptures, including contemporary subjects, the reclining woman with child must have been a favorite. An essay, Selling Sand & Sea, mentions that a sculpture of the reclining woman and child was reported in a January 1900 article and appeared on a 1900 postcard by the Detroit Photographic Company.  An article, Castles in the Sand, in the Ocean Beach (California) Bulletin describes Taylor and his tour of California in 1908 and 1909 when he made a similar sculpture on Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California.:
“Cast Up By the Waves,” sometimes called “Cast Up By the Sea,” was a recurring piece for Taylor, who was born in 1860 and plied his trade as sand artist in the first decade of the 20th century. He did versions of “Cast Up” and similar creations in Long Beach, Asbury Park, N.J, and Atlantic City. Though the friezes of famous people rotated, they usually included Civil War generals. . . His signature reclined woman (often depicted clutching a child to her breast) usually acted as a centerpiece to his projects. The woman alone, her dress full of detailed folds and fabric-mimicking undulations, took Taylor about two hours to create. Taylor’s only tools were his hands – and a stick to finish off delicate details.


For More Vintage Images

http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2013/11/sepia-saturday-202-9-november-2013.html

20 comments:

  1. Those sand sculptors are amazing, and in the past it was probably even more of a skill than now. I have one in my post too. i don't know who he was, but i did give him a donation when i took the photo of his work.

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    1. And I also notice that he felt no need to take off his hat or coat to do his work at the beach :-)

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  2. The sand artist is a very talented fellow, indeed. I wonder what the guys in the background of the postcard picture were doing? The pose of the fellow in the striped top is rather humorous.

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  3. Wow, only took two hours to create the woman? I feel I probably could have worked two days and not gotten it done.

    Dee

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  4. You know he reminds me of Charlie Chaplin! This is so interesting, especially reading the old article about it, but that you could post this and the story behind it as well. Wonderful.

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  5. Mr. Taylor knew his stuff -- I don't know that I could stand watching everything wash away every 12 hours (isn't that roughly high tide to high tide?); it would drive me crazy!

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  6. I really thought it was Charlie Chaplain when I saw the first photo...

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  7. Clever My Taylor could make sand look like transparent fabric. Astonishing.

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  8. That is a really neat postcard! I've lived along the East Coast and seen similar artists but none as dramatic and realistic. America once had thousands of skilled and talented carvers who created the ornamental elements of buildings and decorated furnishings. It was a rewarding trade that required a lot of training. Sadly as fashions changed, the demand for workers with this ability to see in 3-D diminished and they are now found mainly in China.

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  9. Very talented. Amazing. He does look out of place so formally dressed at the beach though.

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  10. It's amazing what people can do with their hands. Just wondering when the last new way of creating started, apart from graffitti artists. Most interesting post.

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  11. Interesting activity but also a little strange, though in reality simply sandcastles for big kids.

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  12. An amazing talent. I wonder what he might have achieved had he turned his hand to something more solid.

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  13. Sand sculptures are so interesting. I could never create more than a few replicas of my sand bucket before they'd crumble and fall in. In Virginia Beach, there is a sand sculpting championship as part of the annual Neptune Festival.

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  14. The artist reminded me of Charlie Chaplin too. Amazing work to be washed away by the tide. Although you said it wasn't as temporary as it seems. Do you mean it didn't wash away?

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    1. I couldn't remember where I found all the information that I didn't include. I remember reading how they packed the sand so it was fairly durable and sometimes even added cement. Also, that sometimes the sculptures took days to complete. It probably wasn't in the path of the normal tides either.

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  15. I find these sculptures fascinating - even modern ones. A very interesting story and pictures.

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  16. Very talented, but he must have had the right type of sand to produce sculptures as good as that.

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  17. A unique talent. It must take an unusual mind to spend the effort to create something beautiful, knowing all along that it will exist only a short time. Sidewalk and chalk artists must think the same way.

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