Gráinne Ní Mháille (The Pirate queen) - sand sculpture

At a time in Ireland when men were men and The Lords of Ireland tried to stave off British rule there was one women, The pirate queen, Gráinne Ní Mháille or Grace O Malley as her name was Anglicised That was chieftain of an area in Mayo. It is written by Anne Chambers in her biography that she was 'a fearless leader, by land and by sea, a political pragmatist and politician, a ruthless plunderer, a mercenary, a rebel, a shrewd and able negotiator, the protective matriarch of her family and tribe, a genuine inheritor of the Mother Goddess and Warrior Queen attributes of her remote ancestors. Above all else, she emerges as a woman who broke the mould and thereby played a unique role in history she was a strong leader by Land and sea' and was someone that you really didn't want to mess with.

There was a story that she went to visit the 8th Baron of Howth in his castle but he and the family were having their Dinner and told her to get lost. In her rage she kidnapped their son and would not give him back till they promised the gate would always be open to her and that they would lay a place for her at the table. Many centuries later to this day the descendants of the family still hold to the deal out of fear of the 16th century bad ass.

Duthain Dealbh was asked to make some sculptures to depict The pirate Queen on Portmarnock Beach, Dublin and I wanted to explore this story from her life. How after so many years the ghost of Gráinne still hangs over the castle.

Continuing on for my experiments with perspective I wanted to give a nearly supernatural view of what would be a very simple scene. Having the family sitting around a table with one empty place was going to be pretty boring. So, Giving a ghosts eye view would add some interest to the proceeding and seeing it from a distance would make it appear to float above the beach.
I was really starting to enjoy these kinds of optical illusions.

I chose a point in space and carved all of the perspective from there. The sculpture was only really meant to work from that one angle and when you moved out of that sweet spot the whole thing became quite strange and warped.

Cinematic sculpting

I really liked the birds eye view, You appeared to be looking down at the table even though you were looking up at the sculpture. Being able to look down the lady's cleavage was a titillating bonus.

With this Sculpture I was starting to think that because all my work would become photos at the end of the day it was interesting to think in a nearly photographic way when I was carving. My love of cinematography was also coming into play as I tried to use the camera angle to add to the story.
Getting all the angles right was a bit of a challenge coupled with the fact that sand has an angle where it wants to collapse so I couldn't push it too far.
There was not seat for Gráinne. Apparently she liked to eat the way she peed.

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Ps

Thanks for reading. I use Steem to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, amongst other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Steem Blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.

Gulliver - sand sculpture

AT-AT a good boy - snow sculpture

Nativity à la Spanish artists - sand sculpture

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[//]:# (!steemitworldmap 53.432700 lat -6.124205 long Gráinne Ní Mháille (The Pirate queen) - sand sculpture 2008 d3scr)