THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 25, 1995 TAG: 9510250044
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
CLARE GRIETZER makes sand castles you can hang on a wall.
And mythical princesses, angels, sunflowers, sunbursts, you name it.
She's a self-taught artist from New York who vacationed in Virginia Beach a few years back and never quite got the sand out of her toes.
So she moved to the Haygood section of the Beach where she has found a home for her creative spirit. An amateur photographer and painter, she has taken the sand that squiggles between her toes, translating it into art.
Her fanciful sand castings range from the mysterious to the charming, from the large to the small, and the sublime to the ridiculous.
``My sister, an artist in D.C., knew that I dappled in art and suggested I try sand casting,'' she said. ``Of course, the sand and water we have here are glorious, the reason I moved here.''
Why not? She thought.
She bought a book on the subject that was not much help because it lacked detail, generally, but particularly about sand. ``Finding the right sand is important,'' she said. ``Commercial sand from large hardware outlets is darker and not as good for my work,'' she noted.
The best sand for casting is found farthest from the surf, she said, near the dune line. That's where the sand is fine rather than coarse. ``It helps if you have friends who live on the beach willing to donate a few bucketfuls,'' she confided.
She puts the sand in a plastic pan - about the size of a large roast pan for the oven - grading it, wetting it, taping it down.
What happens next depends on her mood of the moment. ``I don't make anything that doesn't appeal to me, even though I sell my creations,'' she said.
Her first sand casting was an angel with wings made with ragged pieces of shelving and a round object - a vase bottom - used to make the face.
Once the objects are pressed into sand and removed, she pours a mixture of plaster of Paris and water into the indentions. Drying the creation takes several days, time depending on weather conditions.
The object raised from the sand has a sand coating that gives each creation an antique look. After the surface is brushed to remove excess sand, it is often sprayed with polyurethane spray for preservation.
Sometimes, to give the effect of great age, she may use pliers to nibble at the edges of her artwork. One of her earliest creations was done for a pair of physicians who each wanted a menorah - the seven-branched candelabra symbolic of Judaism - raised and centered on a sand tablet.
She used a pair of copper pipes embedded repeatedly in the sand to make the candelabra. ``The purchasers seemed very pleased and said the finished works looked as though they had come from an ancient cave,'' she said.
Clare - whose artistic name is Couture 7 (she was the seventh of a dozen children) - showed me one of her menorahs. It did appear to be an ancient relic from the Holy Land.
A box contains the flotsam and jetsom she collects to make impressions in the sand. The jumble of items included buttons, furniture embellishments, a drapery holder, bits of glass, stars, shells, rings, you name it.
A masklike woman's face, haunting in its stare, projected from the surface of one creation, the grapey hair made by pressing the end of a conch shell into the sand.
Near it was what resembled the head of a Mayan priest, the hair painted gold, a curious work that also resembled a character who might be found hanging out in a Star Wars bar.
She was at work on Christmas decorations when I visited her home. Angels spray-painted gold, with flaring wings and trumpets in their mouths, resembling ornaments commissioned by a Russian czar.
Her prices range from $10 for small creations to about $500 for large commissioned works.
In the living room were three interesting sand castings, one a nude before Grecian columns, another of swimming fish with bits of colored glass for ocean-bottom debris and a pair of frogs embracing while surrounded by sea shells.
``I don't normally name my paintings but the one of the frogs is titled `Marital Bliss,' '' she said.
She has only done one exhibition of her works and that sold out quickly, she confided.
``I don't do this for the money,'' she said. ``I simply have the urge to create. And I don't create anything I wouldn't want myself.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Huy Nguyen\The Virginian-Pilot< Clare Grietzer
is a self-taught artist who makes sand castings to hang on the
wall.
by CNB