Introduction: I've played in the sand since I was a kid. Sometime in college I read a book on sandcastle building techniques. Basically, you need very wet, fine sand (such as in San Diego), which you pile up in pancakes. To sculpt it, I use a large knife, which gives great flat shapes and corners.

I find that people become pretty stupid around my sand castles. I always get the question "What are you building?" As if it isn't obvious that it looks like a castle and it's made of sand. I also get little kids trying to 'help' out. They don't seem to understand that if you touch the tower, it falls over. Unfortunately, the castles don't seem to attract enough cute girls.

I have also included here some of my other 3D art projects, including snow and plastic.

My essay on sandcastle building technique.

Click on an image to view an enlarged version of it.

Little Castle
Medium: Sand
Size: 3 foot diameter
Description: That's me and my mom. I'm guessing I was about 10 (?) years old. This is the oldest picture I have of my sandcastles.

Cathedral of Evil
Medium: Sand
Size: 3 feet tall, 4 feet long
Description: I did this after taking a class in Castles and Cathedrals. I took the basic architecture of a medieval cathedral and warped it to my own whims.

Castle with Courtyard
Medium: Sand
Size: 3 feet tall, 6 feet long
Description: Built this with the help of my friend, Jara. I don't really know what the castle is going to look like when I start. I just build up the sand, and eventually I start 'seeing' a tower here, an arch there, etc. Then I sculpt around the larger structures. Finally I add windows and doorways.

Big Ass Castle
Medium: Sand
Size: 5 feet tall, 15 feet long
Description: Jara, Matt, and Ali helped build this one. We incorporated all sorts of different structures in this one: arches (one had a span of 1 foot!), round towers, square towers, balls, two lakes, a river, a pyramid, and miles of walkways. It took about 4-5 hours.

Another Castle
Medium: Sand
Size: 4 feet tall, 6 feet long
Description: Deniz, Vik and Laura helped on this one, although I think Vik and I did most of the work. The stupid arch in the front broke 3 times before I got it right.

Snow Tower
Medium: Snow, ink
Size: 7.5 feet tall
Description: My first snow sculpture in Utah. I painted windows on it after I was done sculpting it. Snow is a lot quicker and easier to sculpt than snow, mainly because it sticks to itself. It also takes a lot more abuse before falling apart.

Snowman with kids
Medium: Snow, kids
Size: 8 feet tall
Description: Made this during my second winter in Utah with my roommate Rich. The neighborhood kids came by and helped out a bit. I made the amazing discovery that you can actually roll wet snow into snow balls several feet in diameter. Being a So Cal guy, I always thought that "snow rolling" was a cartoon exagerration. But it really works...good thing, because otherwise snow building would take as long as sand building. Thanks to Ali, Miranda, and A.J. for helping out!

Many Headed Snowman
Medium: Snow, bottle caps, carrots, and black spray paint
Size: 9 feet tall
Description: Made during my third winter in Salt Lake. My friends Matt and Laura visited, along with my brother and some of his friends. We rolled snow balls as big as possible for the base, and then stacked smaller ones for the middle of the body. My brother sat on my shoulders to put the top head in place. After we packed it down, we used bottle caps for the eyes, baby carrots for the noses, and I used spray paint to create the howling mouths.

Air Through Water / Water Through Air
Medium: Acrylic plastic, water, air
Size: 32x20x5 inches
Description: One of my most ambitious and complex projects. Built over a few years in college. I had an idea for a sculpture that would hang on a wall, fully self contained, that would have miniture waterfalls within it. That seemed too simple, so I then thought, maybe I could add some bubbles in tubes as well. The idea came together as a dual motion sculpture, symmetric about the center, where a waterfall falls down the middle, breaks into two waterfalls, and then into four. Simultaneously, air bubbles would move up a water filled tube to the center, break into two tubes, and then into four. The original name of the piece was "Sychronicity," but nobody understood it. I lit the structure internally using white Christmas lights. This project took a long time because it was difficult to figure out how to control the water to avoid excessive splashing, and leaks would occur due to the pressure of the column of water in the tubes. I artificially enhanced the image because of poor lighting conditions and reflections.