For some, life is just a beach. A sandy beach. And while the Sandblast competition is over, the sandy sculptures remain on view — weather permitting — through November at the Manatee Public Beach.
Students from nine schools spent four hours Nov. 4 spraying water, designing and carving sculptures into a heaping pile of sand for Keep Manatee Beautiful’s SandBlast sand-sculpting competition.
The teams participated in one of three categories: elementary and middle school students, and a choice of free form or wildlife for the high school teams.
The designs varied, from a hurricane-themed sculpture to a recreation of the Three Little Pigs to a Teenage Mutant sea turtle.
Olivia Lake, the 17-year old senior who led the Manatee High School Art Department team sponsored by The Islander, said the team spent three weeks discussing their design. The sculptors settled on a representation of hurricanes, given the school is home to the Manatee Hurricanes sports teams and Manatee County’s brush with Hurricane Irma.
The sand sculpture included downed trees, the meteorological symbol for a hurricane, their school’s Hurricanes mascot and newspapers with headlines about hurricanes and school sports.
Peter and Karen Weimann, snowbirds from Connecticut, said they make it a point to come down in time to see the competition every year. “This is a delight for us,” Peter Weimann said, adding that they will return frequently to admire the artwork.
Lake said afterward that the competition went better than she had hoped — Manatee High School took runner-up in the high school free-form competition. “We really weren’t expecting to win anything more than honorable mention,” she said.
Lake added she hopes the club will carry on with the competition.