For the last three days at Headlands Beach State Park, Carl Jara, Karen Fralich and Greg Grady have been building their “larger-than-life” sand sculptures as part of the Headlands BeachFest.
Highlighted by the Ohio Master Sand Sculpting Competition, the Headlands BeachFest, which took place July 16 in Mentor, was first held in 2014. Dubbed the “ultimate beach party,” the event ran from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and featured all-day entertainment, hands-on activities, food trucks and arts and crafts vendors in addition to the three world champion sand sculptors.
Fralich, of Toronto, Canada, was sculpting King Neptune during BeachFest. Prior to her sand sculpting days, Fralich was working in a pottery studio.
“The boss started dating a guy who was a professional sand sculptor,” she said. “He asked me if I’d like to try, I did, I helped him on a local job and I was immediately addicted. That was 28 years ago.”
Fralich said she loves everything about sand sculpting.
“I love the fact that you get to be very physical, you get dirty, you get to be outside, you meet people, travel — it’s just fantastic,” she said. “It’s been wonderful to be a part of this festival. This is my second year and I’m so happy to be back.”
Jara, an eastside of Cleveland resident, recalls his teacher in high school who was very bored with his presence in her class every day. To give him something to do, Jara’s teacher sent him down to the stage crew, he said.
“The guy in charge quickly learned that I was way too detail oriented to be making backdrops,” Jara said. “He had me cut out T-shirt designs for the stage crew and for his private business. One of the T-shirt designs included a sand castle and a dragon. When I inquired what it was for, he informed me it was for the president of the International Association of Sand Castle.”
It was at that time that Jara was asked to join, to which he responded, “That’s ridiculous.” Now, he’s been sculpting sand for 31 years.
Jara’s sculpture that was featured at BeachFest was called ‘Without Dreams, There Exists Only Nightmares.’
“It’s basically a mother and child, and the child is dreaming away,” Jara said. “I thought it would be fun to illustrate the concept of dreams as they dismantle themselves. That really wasn’t the focus of the piece, but it sort of became a secondary focus of it.”
The average time frame to build a “larger-than-life” sand sculpture is five days, Jara said. However, at BeachFest, it’s much like a sprint to the finish as the whole contest is done in just three days, one of those days including the pile preparation.
The pile preparation took each sculptor about 10 hours each, Jara said.
“There’s something about this material that just allows you to create,” he said. “It’s sketching in three dimensions. You don’t have to fuss with this stuff unless you’re fussing over your details. It’ doesn’t take power tools. It’s just you and this raw, visceral material.”
Jara said it takes a sculptor’s entire body to create large sand sculptures.
“This isn’t sitting in a chair and going scribble, scribble, scribble,” he said. “It’ll stay recognizable for moths, but really only look perfect for a few days. This is one of the few events that actually leave them up.”
When finished, the sculptures are sprayed down with a light sealant, to which Jara describes as being a heavily diluted Elmer’s glue.
“It creates a surface film that hardens a little bit,” Jara said, also noting that he has been asked to sculpt everything. Every time he goes to create a sculpture, Jara tries to not make things look like self portraits, but in some way, every piece he does is.
“I carve a lot of women,” Jara said. “While I was training to do this, a local Akron firefighter taught me the basics and introduced me to other people who did this. We worked for many years together while I went to college studying graphic design and illustration.”
Jara credits one of his art professors in college for his sand sculpting journey.
“He said, ‘This thing you got going with the sand that you’re not telling anybody about — you might want to keep going with that,’ ” Jara recalled. “He opened my eyes to a few other temporary mediums.”
As long as he is physically able, Jara plans to continue sand sculpting.
“I can’t deny the ability I have to make money and be happy in my life by being able to do the work I get to do,” Jara said. “I’m grateful to be able to do that and as long as I can, I will. I’m grateful to Mentor for doing this event year after year. These crowds of people — this is awesome.”
