Regular visitors to Nahant Beach are probably familiar with Gary White’s work, whether they know it or not.
In the summer, White, a Nahant resident, can be seen on the beach almost every other day working on elaborate sand sculptures. A retired art teacher, White’s work took him around the world before he arrived in Nahant at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the beach functioning as his backyard, White brought his artistic skill to the sand.
White documents his work on Instagram, sculpting and carving everything from ice cream cones to soccer balls to astronauts, employing tools primarily acquired from the dollar store or crafted from household objects. The beginning of a sculpture, for example, starts with the cut-up midsection of a kitty-litter container serving as a mold, and White also employs a 5-gallon bucket with the bottom removed. To craft a sphere, White reaches for the lid of a peanut-butter jar.
Before arriving in Nahant, White had never worked with sand, but he explains he learned to do so quickly.
“This was more perfect than I can imagine,” he says. “It’s very easy to carve. But also the frame of mind you get into is, it doesn’t matter because it’s going to be broken within minutes, hours. It forces me to do things I’d be too reluctant to do otherwise.”
Sand allows White flexibility not found in other materials like stone, where one misstep could set him back hours. On the beach, White finds freedom in the ability to let go.
He explains he often creates two sculptures at a time. He will know exactly what to do for one but have no plan for the other, letting the sand itself guide his path. Nine times out of 10, he says the better result is the one he didn’t make a plan for.
“It’s not precious anymore. It’s not something I’m afraid to mess up. There’s no pressure, I don’t have to impress anybody,” he says. “Messing around is a big part of finding the idea.”
In fact, White says he almost always has a sense of fear when he heads to the beach because he doesn’t know where the day will take him.
But once he actually gets to work, a plan develops in real time as he figures out what the sand wants to be.
“The most important part is listening and looking, paying attention to what is there and what it wants to become, what it wants to make clear,” he says.
Creating a sculpture is a delicate balance, with White needing the right mix of sand and water to ensure the structure is able to support itself. So much of his process is based on feel, knowing what consistency the sand needs to be before he lifts the mold away, or knowing just how long to let it dry before adding another layer or shape on top.
White, though, says those finer details came quickly to him as he began experimenting on the beach, in part because of his experience carving other materials like wood and stone in his professional life.
“The same way about not being afraid to mess up is where you figure out how far you can go,” he says. “After once or twice, having something fall off, you get a sense of how much weight can be cantilevered over.”
“Trial and error… and not that much error,” he adds.
And White’s teaching background is often on full display during the summer, when he spends hours at a time on the beach working away. As he constructs and carves, White draws the attention of children on the beach, who become curious about what he’s doing. Those children often get a lesson from White himself and, just as he does, become completely riveted by the process.
White explains he has seen children, whose parents say they are never able to focus otherwise, spend hours working on sculptures on the beach.
“It’s fun to make something, but just the process of making something takes away all your woes,” he says. “You’re not concerned about anything.”
It’s the process itself that White loves, letting everything else fall away as he fixates on the project in front of him.
“Once I start working on something, I could be in the cellar, in the dark,” he says. “The moment is engrossing, it’s all that matters.”
