Labyrinth Builders
Never mind that he's apparently unaware of the differences between mazes and labyrinths. HB (Huntington Beach) MazeMan is an "ephemeral artist." He's also very much an entrepreneur, and by that I mean: he creates experiential art on public beaches, while tourists drop donations into a tip bucket nearby.
Like lots of other folks, these out-of-towners thought his handiwork was a-mazing. The ocean swirled at their feet while they set up a tripod, the better to capture their kids at play in MazeMan's labyrinths.
His designs caught the attention of this little girl, too. But watch–she's got some artistry of her own in mind.
Children ran through MazeMan's labyrinths with joyful abandon. They posed reluctantly for hovercraft parents. But the little girl in the purple shirt stood apart from all of them, etching her own set of squiggly lines in the sand.
Every once in a while, the other kids looked over their shoulders, to see what the girl in the purple shirt was up to. If she noticed them watching, she wasn't at all distracted.
The sun drifted lower in the sky, and the tides receded. Families came and went, but the little girl just kept on drawing.
She stopped for a short moment–maybe to admire her handiwork. I thought she was finished at this point, but it wasn't long before she started up again.
"Welcome!" she wrote, in these hastily drawn letters. And whooosh–before I finished snapping this picture, the little girl was gone.
To each, his or her own path.
Most certainly, the artistry is different, but I noticed, too, the difference in approaches. The little girl began at heart of her labyrinth, whereas the Maze Builder wrote "Start" at the outermost edge…just a few footsteps away from the tip bucket I mentioned earlier.