News Features

Winterlude 2005

February 2005 the BC Snow Sculpting Team with teammate Craig Mutch at the Canadian Snow Sculpting Championships in Ottawa/Gatineau at Jacques Cartier Park.
Here I am working on the lower portion of the sculpture on a beautiful sunny day.
Well sure I am at rest and posing but when there is a camera I must make the most of it.

Japan 2004

In February of 2004 as Team Captain of the Canadian Snow Sculpting Team, "The Granular Media Group" , along with Roger Chaisson and Donald Watt traveled to Nayoro, Japan. To Participate in the Japan Cup International Snow Sculpture Contest.
We capture second prize with our piece "Patience".
Here we are starting out on the first day of the competition. Later we will be to the Onsen.
Nayoro is a small Northern City. The weather is moderate, and the snow is awesome.

Carnival de Quebec 2003

A small right up about the Quebec competition.

Carnival de Quebec 2003

A small right up about our return from the Quebec competition.

Silver Star Resort 2002

The 2002 BC Snow Sculpting Championships. Craig Mutch and I create Silver Czar. A story we made up that lent itself to our sculpting style. We placed First and also captured the peoples choice award.

Silver Star Resort 1991

1991 BC Snow Sculpting Championships. This was the first year and we were quite an attraction. We were not as prepared as we would be in later years. So we each took an area and did an abstract piece.

Troll's on the Beach

Pumpkin carving for charity fund raiser in White Rock.

Parksville Sand Castle days

This is from the first year of the reestablished contest at Parksville.

Dubai 1998

In the August of 1998 as part of the Sandemons Sculpting Team , I traveled to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
August is probably the hottest time of year to be in this part of the world. Daily temperatures exceed fifty degrees celsius, and a more moderate 36 to 38 at night. We were invited to participate in Dubai Summer Surprises, a summer shopping festival to draw tourists from the surrounding area and beyond.
  Because it is so hot people do not travel more then they need. Dubai choose to try reversing this trend by inviting people to shop in their wonderful air conditioned malls and enjoy the other incredible facilities
  Dubai is a very moderate Arab state. Tourists are very welcome and there is a surge of proposed development of resorts and hotels.
  While we were there we were featured in many news articles and broadcasts. Here are some of those.

Friday Magazine cover story.

Only the second time in this magazines history
that men have been on the cover.
The other was the Sheik.

Gulf News Friday Magazine story.

The joy of building Sandscapes

By Henry Jacob
Pict ures by Javed Nawab

"This palace is one of the more notable architectural pieces of Dubai that we recreated on a smaller scale," says Billings, team director of Sandemons since its inception in 1993. The main base form was an octagon, approximately 32 feet in diameter. There were eight sides, each 14 feet long. The 6-foot high palace had four wind towers and 100 windows. Says David Dureault, another member of the team: "The wooden base was just to hold the sand in. People thought we were going to cover the wood, and make something on the outside. What we actually did was fill the inside of the wooden base with sand. Then, we removed the prop and shaped the sand into the patterns we wanted."

According to Billings, "most of the sand-sculpting teams in north America, use wooden forms to fill the sand and water, and use dampers to pound the sand. It is much the same way that concrete forms are made. We have to make very sturdy forms that will stand up to the great pressures of the sand and water inside."
   If you try to sculpt loose sand, it will all fall away, says Dureault. "The way sand is created, each piece is irregular in shape. When you pound it with water, each grain of sand locks with the other. And that is what makes a solid block."
   The Sandemons were lucky enough to have the Dubai Municipality supply them with desert sand, which is compact and stands up very nicely.
   According to Ashutosh Rawal, marketing manager for Classic Events and Advertising, Dubai, "Sand-sculpting was part of a series of events that we have been planning for Dubai and the UAE." Children, in particular, felt a sense of achievement; they got a chance to receive professional tips from one of the best teams in the world.
   The sand-sculpting exhibition serves as an indicator that "we are going back to the roots, back to the traditions of this country, bringing sand, and art related to sand, to the mainstream of life. It is a wonderful art."
   Two to three years down the line, Classic Events plans to organize an international sand-sculpting competition in Dubai, with attractive prize money, and some of the best teams from around the world will be participating.

While the Sandemons compete at several events during the year, they perform a great deal more for clients like McDonalds Canada and Maritime Museum, Vancouver, designing and creating sculptures based on conventional themes or product lines. They also work with children from elementary schools, promoting understanding and the sharing of friendships during the practice of sand-sculpture.
   "Typically, a lot of sand-sculpting events are called sand-castle competitions," adds Billings. "In the past, people built castles from sand. Now, it has become much more creative. People have gone far beyond castles."
   What is so special about such exhibitions? "One of the real exciting things is to see how people react to something this large being built out of the sand, before their eyes."
   "Normally, we do not do a lot of structures or replicas of buildings," says Billings. "We do a lot of our own designs, which include fantasy pieces with different things. We can build virtually anything out of sand. It is our passion."
   The Sandemons are also into snow-sculpting. For several years, they have been the snow-carving champions of British Columbia. The Sandemons were placed first, winning People's Choice at the B.C. Snow-Sculpting Competition in six of the last seven contests.
   In the past, the team has created dragons, castles, a dungeon-type theme with people strapped to torture devices and animal scenes - "sort of Walt Disney".
   The 100th anniversary of sand-sculpting was celebrated last year in Atlantic City. The oldest known photograph is of a man on the beach in Atlantic City, sculpting an automobile with some people in it. "Sand-sculpting is a fairly big thing in Canada," says Billings. "There are three to four competitions in B.C. every year, with many demonstrations throughout North America. When we are doing corporate jobs, for example, in malls and so on, they want some specific ideas in the piece, yet they will allow us creative freedom."

Like Billings, the other team members – Craig Mutch, Murray Drummond, Roger Chaisson and Dureault - hail from British Columbia. Murray Drummond, one of the founding members of the Sandemons, has been doing snow and sand- sculptures for nine years, and has had a fascination with sand since he was a child. "But, I never thought that when I would be older, I would be doing this as a hobby. This is a hobby for us still."
   Drummond grew up on a farm in south-west Ontario. As a kid, he loved to build trucks, cars and little cities. "I would build a city out of sand, and then put my toys in the city and make them work." When he was 12, Drummond built a 12-foot-high head of John Lennon in snow, a feat that put him in the glare of the media. "It was all over the local papers," he adds. Dubai is a beautiful place, he says, "beautiful city, excellent people and HOT. The road network is beautiful, it is better than ours in some places." Drummond moved to British Columbia in 1998, after a five-year-stint as food and beverages manager at a resort in the rocky mountains of Alberta.
   Why was a name like Sandemons chosen? "All the teams," says Drummond, "have names that relate to sand. There are teams with names like Sandboxes and Sandscapes. We had to come up with a similar name, and we came up with Sandemons - maybe because we are not evil!"