Have you ever wiggled your toes in the sand on that beach vacation and wished it could last forever? For Team Sandtastic life literally is a beach, and this week they brought their craft to the Kentucky Horse Park to build sand sculptures that will be incorporated into the course of the USHJA Hunter Derby Final in the Rolex Arena on Saturday night. Samantha Lederman has more details.
This genius is the brainchild of course-designer Bobby Murphy who’s renowned for melding his traditional Lexington equestrian background with a knack for the innovative and creative. That coupled with a marketing and business management degree from UK is what stands him and his courses apart.
Times they are indeed a changing. Usually a hunter course is the ultimate in subtlety - quaint gates, natural-looking logs and faux stone walls. This will be the first time ever that sand sculptures have made an appearance on a USHJA course, as decorations, let alone an obstacle.
Turning the concept into reality took four men over 200 hours and 125 tons of sand - not the expensive footing that’s in the arena already, but regular sand from Nugent Sand Company in Cincinnati, and after the event it will either be donated to the Kentucky Dressage Association, or stockpiled for future sand sculptures.
Dean Arscott is one of the Team Sandtastic crew, and is putting the finishing touches on some bourbon barrel sculptures for the sponsor’s tent. Doing the large sculptures outside in the arena at the mercy of Kentucky’s weather has presented all sorts of different problems.
Arscott has a background in graphic art and design, and the sculptors work from photos to get every detail exactly right. Sand sculpting is a thriving and growing phenomenon with an annual world championships and festivals. Team Sandtastic for example has been in business for thirty years and Arscott’s job takes him all over the world.
The six, large, double-sided sculptures in the Rolex arena depict everything from American Pharoah to rosettes to hounds and chickens, as well as pay tribute to a couple of private donors. You might imagine that it would be demoralising to spend so much time on a work of art only to see it disappear a week later but Arscott maintains that’s not the case.
Murphy is delighted with the finished product, and seems remarkably unconcerned about the unsettled weather forecast.
You can see the sculptures for yourself up close and personal in the Rolex arena at the Kentucky Horse Park from now until Saturday night, weather permitting.
