Artistic Sand Castle at Lee St. Beach
Sunday, August 29, 2010

Omar starting on third tallest tower, stairway, windows and stonework on middle and lowest towers

More artistid stonework and ramparts on two lower towers

Quite a crowd watching Omar at work

Stairway and windows on tallest tower

Castle from north showing stair, support pillars and pagoda on tallest tower, and stonework around second tower

Castle from southwest showing exposed stonework at bottom of tallest tower

Entire castle from west

Castle from northwest showing newest tower group at far right

Stairway bridge between two of the newest tower group

Omar finishing sand castle -- Sunday after 6:20PM

This artist, Omar, is excellent at sculpting very intricate and impressive sand castles. He's been doing it for over four years. and has sculptted hundreds of castles. He mainly has worked on Saturday and Sunday mostly on Lee Street Beach in Evanston. He has found a spot on Lee St. Beach where the sun remains the longest before setting, and makes his artistic creations there.

He can construct castles in may styles, including Chinese pagodas, but none of them are intended to resemble an actual physical castle. He uses up to ten different sculpting tools, but most often and common are a simple metal chistle about a half an inch accross, the spray bottle to keep his finished work from drying and blowing away, and the clear plastic tube with which he blows all loose recently sculpted sand away.

By profession he is an auto mechanic, so he is skiled in precise, exact work. He told me he is still a child at heart and loves to come to the beach and make castles. After his children grew up, he started this hobby of exact sand castle sculpting to he can still come to the beach every weekend and make sand castles.