DANA POINT : Partners’ Beach Works Strike a Balance Between Art, Nature

Daryl Maddeaux’s art typically evokes a response much like the one from passerby Nat Sanders--part puzzlement, part wonder, part awe.

“I’m a retired physicist and I’m amazed,” said Sanders, 71, a Dana Point resident who strolled by Maddeaux’s 50-yard tableau of oddly shaped rocks precariously balanced in pairs, end-on-end, along Dana Strand Beachbetween the Dana Point Headlands and the Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Maddeaux uses the narrowest end of a rock as its balancing point.

“It’s incredible how he found out what has to be done to get that balance,” Sanders said.

Michael Cope, 33, a dripping wet surfer still carrying his board, welcomed the temporary addition to his longtime surfing spot.

“I’ve been surfing at this beach for 15 years and I couldn’t believe it. This is neat . . . this is art,” said Cope, a student at Orange Coast College. “I’m coming back with my girlfriend on a full moon night.”

Maddeaux is a self-described former hippie from Vancouver whose credo is “balance is the future.”

To that end, he and partner Jozsef Toth have spent nine months cruising the West Coast in a van in search of the beach with the right mixture of elements to create their unusual style of sculpture.

“I’m one of those guys from the ‘60s and ‘70s who grew my hair halfway down my back, who got arrested in Vietnam peace marches, who still strongly believes we can have a world in balance,” said Maddeaux, 43. “It’s not a corny thought, it’s our art.”

Maddeaux and Toth, a stone mason who is helping promote his partner’s unique artwork, are hoping to receive a commission from the Canadian government to produce a similar creation to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the United Nations next year.

“Our idea is that we can’t always have the world’s people in balance, but we can balance the countries,” Maddeaux said.

If not that, the duo would like to see some sort of sponsor pick up their designs for commercial use.

One day this week, a steady stream of the curious, including television and newspaper reporters, stopped by. Some people leave donations and others sign a book with their observations.

Struggling against the wind and rain, Maddeaux and Toth had created about 200 of the balanced rock pairs within a few days and were attempting to make about 3,000 strung all the way down the beach to the Headlands peninsula.

“We want to have a long enough section so people can look at our creation and get lost in it,” Maddeaux said.

The stretch of beach below an abandoned trailer park has the rocks, the palm trees and the foreboding Headlands peninsula that caught their imagination, Toth said. “Dana Point just grabbed our attention. It was just too much, too beautiful,” he said.

There’s no trick to the rock balancing, just practice at “finding the center of gravity,” Maddeaux said. His hands are his only tools--no glue, no sand, no filing of the pieces--and he works only with rocks found on site.

“We use what Mother Nature gives us just the way it is,” Maddeaux said.