Steve Dellicarpini (b. 1981, Santa Clara, CA, USA)

Tempus in Vitro, 2019

Paper mache, acrylic, sand, steel

7’ H x 4’0

Almost all of my work is inspired by my travels, Tempus in Vitro is no different. Having

lived in coastal cities my entire life, beaches were always a favorite place to visit. I can

vividly remember walking on the beach looking for interesting things that might have

washed up in the sand. Little did I know, the sand itself would become the most

interesting thing I’ve found so far.

Sand is the world’s second most used natural resource after fresh water . It is consumed

in the making of building materials like concrete and glass on an enormous scale. As

the world’s cities expand, over 40 million tons of sand are used every day for similar

purposes . The rate at which this precious resource is being consumed is unsustainable

and is causing mass environmental, economic and social problems.

A large part of my casting and artmaking process involves using a plaster and sand

mixture called investment to make molds to pour molten metal in. During the years I

have been casting, I’ve used hundreds of bags of sand paying little attention to where

they come from or what was is inside. It wasn’t until recently that I read the printing on

the bag, “Clean, Graded, Kiln dried Monterey sands”. As I did more research, I found

that this sand is taken from a sand mine on the Monterey Bay. The Cemex Lapis sand

mine is a coastal sand mine which dredges up sand from a pit just off the public

beaches. This plant has been extracting sand from the coast since 1906. Over that

time, hundreds of millions of tons of sand have been stripped from the coast. This has

resulted in consequences like coastal erosion and habitat loss throughout the Monterey

Bay.

I wanted the design of Tempus in Vitro to elicit an industrial building with steel I-beams

and concrete. All the miniature wooden buildings are replicas of Monterey coastal

landmarks that will be affected by coastal erosion. For the duration of the piece,

viewers can witness first hand the results of erosion as the buildings tumble to the

bottom while be reminded that time is running out.

1 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/world-facing-global-sand-crisis-180964815/

2 http://www.ejolt.org/2014/08/building-an-economy-on-quicksand/