Treasure Island Sand Castles

 

We took some time off from our busy schedule,(don’t laugh to hard about that), and headed off to Treasure Island to attend the Sand Carving competition. Our plan was to watch the artists work on Friday and then to return to see their completed works on Sunday.

There were ten artists who entered the competition and ranged from locals to artists from all over the USA. Among the contestants, one was from South Padre Island and another from Washington State. There was even an artist from the Netherlands, and so you could say it was an international field.

By the time we arrived on Friday the sand had already been prepared and the artists were all busy, using trowels, paintbrushes, and wooded carving sticks to create their ethereal masterpieces. We walked around and took lots of images as each seemed to be locked into their own private world as they ignored the gawkers and the constant photography from cameras, tablets, and cell phones.

Of course we also had to visit the vender booths, however the first vender got into a tirade about the election and so we shook our head and moved on,(We have tried to adopt the Escapee rule, which is to avoid discussing politics or religion, as nothing is ever solved and people usually seem to get upset). There were some booths that actually had local art and one booth featured unique shadow boxes with butterflies and dragonflies, all made out of locally collected sea shells.

The weather was a lot nicer, when we returned on Sunday. Parking at Jenny’ house we enjoyed a nice walk along the beach and found quite a few more people at the carvings. Prizes had been awarded and it seemed so subjective as I couldn’t see a lot of difference between the works. They were all beautiful and you wonder how they kept them together as the sun and wind dried them out.

Two of the carvings were somewhat political, but I suppose that is to be expected. The first place carving depicted bulldozers destroying the rain forest and had a characature of a rich person guiding it all as he breathed oxygen from his own private  and enclosed terrarium forest. Money stuffed his pockets, need I say more?

I really didn’t have favorite but the Mermaid was clever as the back side suggested she had walked away from her image, or at least that’s what I thought. Several depicted human hearts and another depicted a beautiful woman, with her backside showing the devil inside. I never thought of a beautiful woman, as necessarily being a devil,  as evil seems to me to transcend sex.

So we enjoyed the walk around the carvings and we even looked for the shells artists but they were closed up, maybe they sold all their works. Returning home we passed a huge flea market and we made the mistake of stopping, but that’s another tale for another entry. Clear skies