Hundreds of people flocked to Cannon Beach on Saturday to watch the 60th anniversary of one of Oregon’s most creative events: the Cannon Beach Sandcastle Contest. Despite short bursts of pouring rain in the early afternoon, crowds of people gathered to watch teams of sand artists create sculptures and castles from the wet sand of the Pacific coast. While the intermittent rain sent some beachgoers scrambling for shelter and reaching for umbrellas, the dozens of competitors in the event’s seven entry categories were unperturbed.
“We can take a little storm here and there,” said 39-year-old competitor Grady Clapp, a member of the Form Finders team, which competed in the invitation-only masters category. “You actually do want some amount of water for the structures, so rain can be a little helpful.” Clapp said that he and the Form Finders are based in Olympia, Washington, but make a point of traveling all the way to Cannon Beach to compete each year.
This year, the team had eight members at the contest, Clapp said. One of Clapp’s teammates, Erik Wilber, said that he has been sand sculpting for 12 years, and that the Form Finders have done competitions in the Washington towns of Long Beach and Ocean Shores. He said many of the participants of the Cannon Beach competition are part of a close-knit community of sand artists united by a shared love of their shifting material.
“That’s part of the artistic beauty of it; it’s a temporary medium,” he said. “That me.