Fantasy Castles Grow From Sand in Summer Magic

A large wave battered the south wall of the sand castle. But the two boys knee-deep in a pool of seawater inside the central “courtyard” of their castle barely noticed.

Mike Stephens, 11, and Daniel Fortier, 10, were more intent on the job at hand: shaping small mounds of wet sand into block “houses,” the beginnings of a small peasants’ village inside a kingdom made of equal parts grit and fantasy.

“I’m the king, and he’s the prince,” Mike announced with a grin as the boys practiced their craft at Corona del Mar State Beach on a recent Sunday.

Now that summer has arrived, sand sculptors of all ages have hit the beaches.

“We’re the summer guys,” said Jeffrey Poland, one of about 20 “professional” sand castle sculptors in Orange County who sometimes are paid for their work. “We don’t do this all winter because it’s too cold. But in the summer, some guys surf, some play paddle ball--and we build castles.”

Practitioners of this art range from small boys who like to build forts to serious sculptors like Poland. Their styles of construction vary greatly--from a toddler’s fortress cast from a plastic sand bucket to detailed replicas of historic castles complete with arched windows, crenelated walls and Gothic spires.

But the motive for building them is the same.

“There’s great satisfaction in working with Mother Earth--to shape it and form it to make your own statement in relation to the Earth,” said Harriet Friedman, a Jungian psychoanalyst from West Los Angeles who uses sand sculpture in her therapy. “Building a sand castle on the beach is the psyche’s way of feeling whole and powerful and centered.”

Local sand sculptors used simpler language.

‘It’s Magic’

“It’s magic,” said Kent Trollen, a Newport Beach architect who also owns the county’s only sand castle-building business, Sandcastles Unlimited.

The Orange County Fair has commissioned Trollen’s firm to build a 13-foot-high fantasy castle this July as the centerpiece of a man-made beach.

And for the sixth year in a row, United Way of Orange County will launch its fall fund-raising campaign with a September sand castle contest.

The contest, first held at Bolsa Chica State Beach, drew 20,000 spectators in 1983. The event was immediately popular although professional sand sculptors initially complained about the location, saying that Bolsa Chica’s raw material was “large-granule sand” with poor compaction qualities. When they tried to build towers or arches, their structures fell apart, said Dennis Gaschen, an organizer of that first contest.

“The professionals said if we held it again at Bolsa Chica, they would never come again,” he recounted. But they have been happy since 1984 when United Way moved its contest to the finer-grained sands of Seal Beach--said to be the best sculpting material in the county.

The United Way contest has grown bigger every year--culminating last year in a nine-day festival celebrating “the history of architecture in sand,” with replicas of the Parthenon, Heidelberg Castle and the Orange County Performing Arts Center. It drew 250,000 spectators and some traffic headaches for Seal Beach.

Still, city officials were pleased. It gave the beach town national publicity, said Carol King, who coordinates special events for the city. “And sand castles draw a nice family crowd,” she noted.

This fall, United Way expects 20,000 spectators at a smaller, two-day contest. But organizers hope that the last day will draw professional sculptors from around the country.

This year will also mark the 27th celebration of the Corona del Mar Sand Castle Contest, the oldest in the county and possibly in Southern California. Some of Orange County’s professional sculptors say they got their start there 12 years ago and return every year to compete.

“Sand castles appeal to the child within us,” Gaschen said.

On the beach near the San Clemente Pier, Maryanna Anderson waited for a wave to recede, then patted wet sand into a mound.

As president of San Clemente’s Ocean Festival for several years, the 45-year-old Anderson organizes a fair that typically draws 60,000 people, including some sophisticated sand sculptors who have built sports cars, porpoises and a replica of the Richard M. Nixon Library.

Prefers Free Form

But Anderson prefers a free-form style of sand sculpture. She demonstrated a technique learned as a child--the art of making drip castles.

Scooping up a fistful of wet sand, she clasped both hands together and squeezed. Slowly, she dropped one blob of sand on the next to make a lumpy tower. “I never design a castle,” she said. “I just like playing, having fun.”

Within 15 minutes Anderson had made three misshapen spires--turrets, she said, but added quickly: “Of course, they could also be pine trees. You’ve got to use your imagination.”

She scooped more sand, squeezed again and made a winding “cobblestone walkway” to the castle.

But as Anderson stepped back to admire her work, a large wave swept in, dissolving the walkway and tearing off one of the turrets. “No, no, no,” she cried. But it was too late. Part of the castle was gone.

“Oh, well,” she sighed. “I can make more cobblestones. It will look better next time.”

The glass jar on the windowsill of Kent Trollen’s office contained a mix of water and gray sand.

“This is a great sand,” Trollen said. Because it was finely grained, perfect for carving, he planned to truck 30 tons of it to the Orange County Fair to build his next project, a large “fantasy castle” commissioned by the fair.

At 39, Trollen earns a living designing office buildings and shopping centers. But for 12 years, he has also run his own sand-sculpting business, building castles for magazine covers and movie sets and working with a group of friends nicknamed “The Dirty Dozen” to compete in sculpting contests from White Rock, British Columbia, to Imperial Beach.

Actually, Trollen said, he would prefer to “cash in the pencil” and build sand castles full time.

“I’ve spent all week trying to get building permits for a project,” he said with irritation. By contrast, “when you build a sand castle, you can go in and build anything you want. No one’s telling you what to do.”

Sketch Castle Outline

Still, Trollen’s castles are a major production. He and his fellow sculptors sometimes sketch the outline of a castle before they build. And sometimes, as they did on one recent Sunday at Corona del Mar State Beach, they get together to practice.

Using plywood forms, they shovel tons of sand into a pile, wet it and tamp it to make it compact.

Finally, using an array of pallet knives, cake-decorating tools, masonry trowels and spatulas, they begin to carve.

Trollen enjoys the spectacle of building a large castle on a public beach. “People are convinced you can’t build sheer walls. They want to know, ‘What’s in there? What’s holding that up?’ ”

Trollen said he responds, “Nothing but sand and water.”

Dana Point resident Carolyn Shearer, 36, has spent the last year teaching children and adults to build castles and interesting creatures in the sand.

“Why do you want to make only castles when you could make a dinosaur, an airplane or a car?” she asked. “Your only limit is your imagination.”

Her tools are simple: a trowel, a shovel and sometimes a plastic trash can with the bottom cut out to mold the sand.

At Cove Beach in Dana Point Harbor, she filled the trash can with a mix of one-fourth sand and three-fourths water, then pulled off the bucket to reveal a chunky mold of packed sand about 2 feet high.

Her sons, Forrest, 11, and Torrey, 4, helped smooth the form as their mother shaped it into a small house with a chimney.

“I’m not really an artsy-craftsy person,” Shearer said. “But this is good family fun, and it’s free. If you’re looking for cheap entertainment for the kids, you can just take the kitchen tools and go to the beach!”

The ingredients were even simpler on a recent relaxing day at the beach: four boys, one trowel, one plastic cup and the soft, brown, malleable sand of Corona del Mar State Beach.

The boys were hard at work making drip castles, a dragon, two large forts, a racing car and sea turtles from the sand.

Even when successive waves wiped out their handiwork, they did not mind. They just started over again on a new project.

“I make a lot of castles,” explained David Fortier, 12. “And they’re different every time.”