On the Beach: Simon Linington

There are four stages when filling a sculpture like Bajo la Sierra Larga:

Collecting material

Cleaning and sizing material

Ordering material

Pouring material

Collecting material

I spend a lot of time walking in the area surrounding the site of the sculpture to collect materials because I want it to look like it belongs in the local environment. I grew up on the Isle of Wight, a small Island off the south coast of England, and as a young person I would walk along the many beaches and look up at the cliffs, and notice the numerous different coloured sands and the way one would go over and around another. These were caused by collisions under the earth’s surface millions of years ago. 

When I’m looking for materials I’m looking for common colours, colours I like, and colours that stand out. I'm also looking for different textures and as a rule, I usually try to find three different ones. 

Cleaning and sizing material

This is the slowest part of the process. Large materials are broken down with a hammer to make them smaller, and pieces that can’t be broken are taken out so there is a uniformity of size. All materials are sieved to clean them of leaves, twigs, dead insects etc. 

It’s important to clean the material thoroughly because if done well, it creates a disjuncture with the landscape when viewed through the glass. The viewer knows the material is from the area surrounding the sculpture, but it doesn’t quite look like it. 

Ordering material

Sometimes I make a sketch or template which acts as a guide for pouring the material into the vitrine. It tells me how many bands there will be, their depth, and how they move from one end of the sculpture to the other. 

Deciding what order to put the materials in can be a little more complicated. Sometimes I want to start with a particular colour, and at other times I choose one at random; I think what would compliment that colour and I make a plan on the ground in front of me by placing the material containers in a line. It's a loose plan that almost always changes. There are times when I'm trying to create very subtle changes from one band to another, and others where I want the biggest possible contrast. 

With a sculpture like Bajo la Sierra Larga, I photograph the empty vitrine in the landscape and try to decide the shape and colour of the bands by looking at the height of the bushes growing alongside it, or the crest of the hill passing behind etc. I want the sculpture to fit into the landscape, to be a part of it, and I also want it to be bold, to dominate, and achieving both of these things is often trial and error.