As a teenager Andrew became enamored with the colored sands found at Iowa's Picture Rocks park where water derived from the Mississippi river charged with various minerals pass through limestones staining them a range of colors.
Andrew brought home the sand and sorted the grains by size and color then began arranging them grain-by-grain inside glass bottles. Beginning with geometric shapes Andrew developed his craft, designed special tools for his art, and began creating extraordinarily detailed images with a great deal of subtlety in shading. The grains are not glued, rather, they are held in place inside the jars by pressure of tightly packed sand.
Andrew created images of George Washington on his horse, nautical scenes, flowers, local events, historical figures, flags, and geometric patterns, even words. At one point in his life Andrew worked for South Side Museum in Chicago creating designs with sand then smashing them to demonstrate there is no magic involved. But he received little recognition in his time. His genius largely unappreciated. It was not realized until later that Andrew actually invented a new art form and perfected it all by himself, and neither did Andrew himself seem to know his own art's worth. He sold his bottles for 50₵ to a few dollars. Now they are worth thousands. Many have been broken. Of the bottles that survived, not one grain has moved out of place.
Andrew died of tuberculosis at age thirty-seven.
Google Images [Andrew Clemens sand art]
https://www.google.com/search?q=andrew+clemens+sand+art&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=fwO5U92uHsunyATovILgBA&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1223&bih=589
16 comments:
Astounding.
(1) I ate dinner last night at some place where George Washington supposedly ate, or slept, or beat his horse, or something or other. The staff encourages the patrons to have a look around and take it all in.
Arranged about, here and there, were various bric-a-brac, ornaments, knickknacks, trinkets, bibelots, gewgaws, gimcracks, tchotchkes and objets d'art.
None of it was nearly so nifty as what's on display here. So thank you for this post.
(2) In all fairness, I should add that the restaurant had some very beautiful art worthy of admiration, appreciation and perhaps even veneration. They were in charge of the hostess station, one of them having the nicest teeth I've ever seen.
She was of college age with perfect posture, slender and athletic, wearing a white knit summer dress, she had to be a dancer, if not a goddess.
I was smitten, my boyish heart captured immediately and completely, and it never occurred to me that she might soon enough die of tuberculosis same as Mr. Clemens.
Beautiful and fascinating, making something durable out of sand, which has always served as metaphor for the transitory.
Exactly, 8:03. As I was going to say Tibetan sand mandalas in a jar. Such focus.
Speaking of metaphors, my little brother had one of these.
He was pretty young at the time and everything he made pretty much looked like a pile of sand, if you take my meaning.
Fascinating link and story, Chip.
what amazing talent.
These creations are highly unstable thermodynamically, and their assembly has a large negative ΔS (entropy) of formation. In other words, there is virtually nothing holding them together chemically; their arrangement is purely an act of overcoming disorder. In my view, they are extreme in that way, perhaps as much as an ice sculpture out doors on a blazing hot day.
And yet, the mood abides.
Oh, I'm so jaded.
But how does the sand against the glass remain in place? Is the design all the way through, in layers?
Dead at 37, yet Norman Lear still lives. Truly there is no God.
1- That is amazing work. It is astounding to me.
2- And it brings to mind the Dennis Miller bit about Joe Biden seeing a ship in a bottle and asking "how they got it into the bottle?!"
Another great and unique post Chip.
How did he do that portrait of General Washington.
You must know it is a great post when I mostly keep my yap shut :-)
My God. I had no idea a human being with talent like this existed. Wow!!! is all I can say.
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