REVERE — As the heat beat down on Revere Beach, 16 artists from across the world transformed sand into spectacles at the 18th Revere Beach International Sand Sculpting Festival.
Artists came from every corner of the earth, including Karen Fralich of Canada, Slavian Borecki of Poland, and Matsu Yoshi of Japan. One artist was close to home, Deb Barrett-Cutulle, of Saugus.
Barrett-Cutulle has been creating sand sculptures for the Festival for 18 years, doing the logo sculptures in the center. She has been a competitor in the competition for six years and first started out on a doubles sculpting team. She said that she comes back every year because of “passion [and] a love for art. I think people who like sand, love sand. They fall in love with it.”
Barrett-Cutulle’s sculpture this year was a sentimental homage to a project she did while studying at the Art Institute of Boston. The sculpture, titled “Sk-eye Shadow-s,” is a giant hand holding an eye shadow palette with a reflection of an eye.
Morgan Rudluff came from California to create her sculpture, “Captured.” The sculpture depicts a woman locked in a cage, releasing a butterfly from an outstretched hand. Behind the woman are large sculptures of monarch butterflies.
Rudluff said the piece was an emotional response to “new current events stuff and [her] relationship to the feeling of being held captive or being captured– anyone who finds themself in a position lacking power and vulnerability all the sudden becomes desperate to change their circumstances — and that’s what this piece is.”
Other sculptures sought to bring awareness, particularly to mental health. Bruce Peck, who regained his love of art on the Gulf Coast of Florida is “relatively new to the scene,” he said, having only been a creator of sand art for seven years, this being his first time at Revere Beach.
Peck’s debut sculpture was a piece called “Anxiety Stranglehold.” He was planning out the piece as he went, already having created a giant bald head and eyes with jail bars on them.
He described the piece, “It’s a person that has all the symptoms of bad anxiety that’s kind of crippling, there’s gonna be some features put in there to show that off, you can see the jail bar eyes because he’s trapped in his own body, he’s gonna have two hands under the skin of his neck that are strangling him … maybe some ground work where hands are gripping through the sand to show what people go through with anxiety.”
New Jersey Artist Matt Deibert also wanted to bring awareness to mental health with his sculpture. Inspired by his daughter’s drawing, Deibert created a sculpture of a crying angel with arms grabbing at her. He said the piece was meant to evoke the different experiences of people struggling with mental illness in order to bring awareness.
Other sculptures included a sculpture of the devil’s head on an angel’s body, the Monopoly man, a giant wave, and the centerpiece, the wonders of the world.
Passers-by were impressed with the sculptors’ talents. Susan and Kathy, who came from the Worcester area, said they had been to the sculpture contest in New Hampshire, but it was their first time seeing the competition on Revere Beach. Kathy said, “It’s awesome, they do a great job. I like watching them do it.”
Emma Fringuelli can be reached at [email protected].
