In 1981, Todd Vander Pluym received a dire diagnosis from his doctor: Within the next ten to fifteen years, he’d be completely blind.
Diagnosed with diabetes early in life, Vander Pluym — who had held a number of jobs through his life, from riverboat gambler to bus boy to architect — decided to follow through on an ambition he began to take interest in as a young boy: Playing in the sand.
An artist and builder his entire life, from painting and drawing to constructing houses of cards and matchstick towers, Vander Pluym has become an internationally lauded sand sculptor. He’s made his living creating towering, ornately-detailed sculptures that have been admired by everyone from mall-walking gawkers to princesses and presidents.
This weekend, he is taking his talents to the Redondo Beach waterfront, where he will organize the inaugural Sand Sculpting Contest at this year’s iteration of the King Harbor Boating Foundation Sea Fair.
His career began, in a sense, as a young boy, when he and his friends, from the ages of 7 to 10 years old, carved out a network of tunnels underneath a municipal parking lot in Manhattan Beach, he said. “Borrowing” kerosene lanterns from the city and building a variety of escape hatches, the tunnels were a club house for the kids.
Unfortunately, it quite literally came crumbling down when a heavy rainstorm, combined with the weight of city-owned vehicles parked in the lot, caused a cave-in. “There was a picture in the Daily Breeze at the time,” Vander Pluym said, “showing a truck at an angle, sticking out of the hole.”
It wasn’t long before the city realized that the tunnels were the handiwork of local kids. Shortly after, 10 year old Vander Pluym was down at the police station, “ratted out” by one of his friends.
“The police chief put me into the jail and said to me, ‘Todd, you can play out on the beach, but not in the town,’” Vander Pluym said, laughing. “That’s what started me off!”
It was in the 1980s that he fully embraced sculpture as a career, eventually being called to create castles and characters for countries and companies around the world. “It’s like being in a fishbowl,” Vander Pluym said of carving out a sculpture in public, something he likens to performance art. “I know it’s successful if you can pull people in.”
The variety of what people say as they pass by is “immense,” he says. “Sometimes people will walk by and say ‘Don’t you have anything better to do?’” he said, imitating a sneer. “Some will stop and they’ll say, ‘Oh, I wish I could do that.’”
That’s when he’ll invite them to join in. What happens after that depends on their response.
If they accept, they’re in: Just jump in into the sandbox and do what Vander Pluym tells you to do. If they say that they’re afraid of making a mistake, he’ll say “Oh, that’s okay! Whatever happens, we’ll be able to fix it.” If they hesitate again, he’ll ask them if they’ll do him a favor. When they agree, he’ll hand them a tool, and before they know it, they’re carving details into a sand castle. “I got Ronald Reagan to sculpt some windows — I did the ‘hold the tool’ trick,” Vander Pluym said.
That’s how a viewer gets involved, he says. “They’re taken from the outside in — they’ve already projected themselves into the project. Now, all they have to do is step over the fence and get inside,” he said, noting that he’s taken volunteers, taught them the basics, and helped them become professionals on their own right.
“It’s the oldest art form on Earth,” Vander Pluym said, noting that sand sculpting began when the first person took a few moments to consider the print their foot made in a riverbank. “All of these things that have been done in sand, we can only imagine what they were, or what they might have been.”
“Sand sculpting takes nothing from the face of the Earth but leaves behind visual pleasure,” Vander Pluym said.
King Harbor Sea Fair 2015 is on May 17, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the King Harbor Marina, 208 Yacht Club Way. For more information, visit khbf.org/seafair2015.
