I offered to volunteer my time at the Art Center here in Miller Beach so they could get more photos of their events. This week there is a sand mandala being made by Tibetan Monks from the Drepung Goman Monastery live for the entire week. I'll be showing up every day to capture the progress for it.
They work with long thing funnels that have grooves on them to slowly shake multi colored sand out for their patterns. Starting with a simple layout to get all the spacing correct, all the other details and colors are just remembered in their head.
It's impressive to watch them work and to see how thin they can get the lines, shaking them out almost a grain at a time. There's so much texture to see if you take a moment and look closely.
As I watched them work I wondered what would happen if a mistake were to be made. I'm sure they train for years to make sure they don't, but life finds a way. Lucky me I got to witness that exact scenario.
The solution is to put a rag over the end of the tool and suck the sand back up through the tube so you can try again.
this lets them remove just the portion that needs to be corrected without disturbing anything else.
As they get further out the design gets more detailed. I'm excited to watch it fall together.
See the full album on my main gallery, with updates every day this week!