SCAD Sand Arts Festival: It’s one for the bucket list. Spend the day on Tybee Island’s picturesque North Beach and watch in awe as elaborate creations rise from the sand and move in the wind. Enjoy the picture-perfect setting and cheer on your favorite SCAD artists. Just make sure to get there before the tide comes in!
Presented by the School of Foundation Studies and supported by the School of Design, School of Building Arts, and School of Communications, SCAD Sand Arts Festival is open to SCAD students, alumni, faculty and staff. Participants vie for awards and prizes, including the coveted top prize for SCAD Spirit.
A panel of judges, including esteemed alumnus Jason Hackenwerth (M.F.A. painting), known for his playful installations throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, will be on hand. Hackenwerth will create a sculpture for the beach and will also be an alumni mentor to students building objects for the event.
Sand art is the practice of modelling sand into an artistic form, such as a sand brushing, sand sculpture, sandpainting, or sand bottles. A sandcastle is a type of sand sculpture resembling a miniature building, often a castle.
The two basic building ingredients, sand and water, are available in abundance on a sandy beach, so most sand play takes place there, or in a sandpit. Tidal beaches generally have sand that limits height and structure because of the shape of the sand grains. Good sculpture sand is somewhat dirty, having silt and clay that helps lock the irregular-shaped sand grains together.
Sand castles are typically made by children for fun, but there are also sand-sculpture contests for adults that involve large, complex constructions. The largest sandcastle made in a contest was 18 feet tall; the owner, Ronald Malcnujio, a five-foot-high man, had to use several ladders, each the height of the sandcastle. His sculpture consisted of one ton of sand and 10 litres of water to sculpt.
Sand grains will always stick together unless the sand is reasonably fine. While dry sand is loose, wet sand is adherent if the proper amounts of sand and water are used in the mixture. The reason for this is that water forms little "bridges" between the grains of sand when it is damp due to the forces of surface tension.[1]
When the sand dries out or gets wet, the shape of a structure may change, and "landslides" are common. Furthermore, the mixture of fine (mostly sharper) and coarse sand granules is very important to achieve good "sand construction" results. Fine granules that have been rounded by the natural influences of seas, rivers or fluvials, in turn negatively influence the bonding between the individual granules as they more easily slide past each other. Research[2] is thus necessary to find the most suitable sand to achieve an optimal, landslide-free construction.
Shovels and buckets are the main construction tools used in creating sand castles and sand sculptures, although some people use only their hands.
