Tide is turning for the sculptor with his feat in the sand

AFTER notching up another success, Yorkshire sand sculptor Jamie Wardley tells Sarah Freeman why life is most definitely a beach.

However, seven years ago, after a chance meeting with a veteran of the sands, Jamie decided to go it alone, setting up his own sculpting business in his home city.

“I’d always been interested in photography, painting and drawing, but somehow ended up studying environmental science at university,” he says. “However, after I graduated I was on holiday in Norway and while I was out there I met a sand sculptor. In one morning I saw him turn two blocks of sand into the Queen and Mr Bean.

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“He was creating an English tea party for a tea company and I was just amazed. I got talking to him, he gave me a few tips and to cut a long story short I ended up going back to Norway to work with him.”

It proved to be a wise move and after a number of years working freelance and acquiring skills as an ice-sculptor, Jamie launched his own company, Sand In Your Eye. The business is based in Bradford, but has won contracts from all over the world, most recently teaming up with Aardman Animations, the company behind Wallace and Gromit.

The brief was to produce a film for the mobile phone company Nokia and the result was Gulp!, the world’s largest stop motion animation, which has already notched up more than one million hits on YouTube, a marketing coup for both Nokia and Jamie.

“The story of a fisherman who gets swallowed by a very large fish was simple, but the process of filming it was incredibly painstaking,” he says, taking a break from building a giant sandal on Bournemouth beach. “It was shot entirely on a Nokia phone, which was strapped onto a 40m high cherry picker on a beach in Wales which just so happened to be the scene of gale force winds when we turned up.

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“When they are doing Wallace and Gromit, Aardman probably notch up about two seconds of footage a day. We were averaging about 15 seconds, but that still felt agonisingly slow, but it was good fun.

“We have never had any experience of animation before so it was a steep learning curve, but another thing to add to the CV.” Certainly, Jamie and the rest of the team, most of whom also hail from Bradford, have not been afraid of challenges.

Last year, Sand In Your Eye descended on Filey to create a 800m slogan marking the release of American singer Jack Johnson’s album To the Sea. “That was particularly hard just because of the sheer size of the area we had to cover. It was so large we couldn’t even see the people at the other end and had to use binoculars just to pick them out.

“When you’re working on a beach there’s always the pressure of the tide coming in. It’s out of your control, but somewhere like Filey does have its advantages. It’s a long clear stretch of beach and we’ve worked on it a number of times so we know its nuances. It’s a spectacular place and the promenade provides a really good viewing platform.”

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While there are six full-time members of the Sand in Your Eye team, wherever they turn up they usually find there is no shortage of volunteers to help them turn a large pile of sand into a work of art.

“You get people standing around having a look, then they’ll maybe ask a couple of questions and as soon as you ask them if they would like to have a go they are up there rake in hand leaving their mark,” says Jamie, who says his first ever attempt at sand sculpture was a very small rat. “A couple of years ago we did a 4.5m high sculptor of Charles Darwin in Bradford’s Centenary Square to mark the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species.

“That was pretty special because it was in our home city and we got such positive feedback from it. The truth is that with a little bit of imagination and OK, quite a lot of sand, everyone can have a go at creating their own sculpture.”

However, while the company may now have an impressive portfolio of photographs and video footage of their ice and sand sculptures, the original work is often washed away in a matter of minutes. Not that they mind; in fact, they prefer it that way.

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“I get so much pleasure creating a piece, that I really don’t mind when it has disappeared,” says Jamie. “Besides, there’s always another project to look forward to.”

To see Sand In Your Eye’s record breaking animation visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieN2vhslTTU