The two large sand sculptures on the beaches of Gladstone and Escanaba are the most recent creations from a team of professionals from downstate.

Visit Escanaba, the convention and visitors bureau for Delta County, hired the artists of Art Club to craft the creations on the shores. It was a collaborative process — Visit Escanaba wanted to engage beachgoers, and Art Club sought to create something ephemeral but entertaining.

“We always try to think of something that’s going to make people smile or laugh,” said Art Club’s Johnnie Martinez. “We think of it as like a one-panel comic strip. You get one chance to look at it.”

Johnnie is the founder, owner and operator of Art Club, which is based in Birch Run, Mich., down in Saginaw County. After departing work as a high school art teacher, Martinez started his own business and later teamed up with other independent artists.

R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press Johnnie Martinez, left, owner and operator of Art Club, and Sean Gallagher, a proficient ceramics artist, work on a sand sculpture in Escanaba on Thursday.

When Martinez Studio first began, some of the job requests were too big to handle on their own, explained Melanie Martinez, Johnnie’s wife, who was operating a camera on the beach this week. In order to meet the demand, the Martinezes rounded up some friends and formed a new business — Art Club, a network that connects multiple professional artists, each of whom has their own solo studio or operation, so that they may come together as a team to undertake large-scale endeavors “that would normally be out of our logistical abilities,” like large murals and sculptures.

Billy Budd IV, primarily a painter when working on his own, and Sean Gallagher, a ceramics artist, are friends Johnnie worked with on ice sculptures before they began collaborating on chalk art and sand sculptures in the warmer months. All three were on scene in Gladstone and Escanaba recently sculpting Bigfoot while Melanie and Visit Escanaba captured footage.

The Art Club crew has been to this neck of the woods before; for several years, the Upper Peninsula State Fair Authority had enlisted them to create sand sculptures. The last one they did for the fair was a cornucopia a few years ago.

When looking to enhance summer visitors’ beach experiences, Visit Escanaba thought of Art Club, as “their reputation for turning sand into engaging public art made them a natural fit,” said Visit Escanaba CEO Robert Micheau.

“The goal was to create something that would surprise and delight both locals and visitors, while drawing more attention to our beaches. Sand sculptures are visually striking and inherently temporary, which adds a sense of discovery and encourages people to get out and explore,” Micheau said. “It’s also a great way to bring art into public spaces in a fun, approachable way that complements the natural beauty of Delta County.”

R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press From left to right, Billy Budd, Johnnie Martinez and Sean Gallagher assemble the basic form of what would become a fisherman cryptid. The sand sculpture, now complete on Escanaba’s Aronson Island, is one of two projects Visit Escanaba enlisted Art Club to build in Delta County.

Johnnie said that an early step was to select a figure to dominate the artwork. He said they presented a few ideas to Visit Escanaba.

“We needed to find — we call it a mascot, some kind of character that kind of best represents the area. We looked at bears, we looked at moose, we looked at other animals that are frequent up here. And then somebody read an article about a Bigfoot sighting in the area,” Johnnie said.

“Together we landed on the idea of Bigfoot enjoying a beach day — a fun nod to local folklore and vacation vibes,” Micheau said.

Sand was trucked in for the projects after Art Club explained to Visit Escanaba that they were looking for sand with a clay content. Johnnie said that sand ideal for sculpting can be packed into a ball when moist and roll around in the palm of one’s hand without falling apart.

“But any sand can be carved,” he added, and mentioned that projects done with ordinary beach sand just have to remain shorter, as most sand doesn’t have the clay to help bind the work together.

Each of the projects in Delta County took a couple days’ work from the small team, who used a hose to wet the material as they formed the masses before carving in details.

The statues’ lifespans are determined by several factors, primarily weather — although the medium is able to shed some water — and whether people try to touch it or climb on it. Johnnie estimated that on the Delta County beaches, they’ve got maybe a week before they look too “melted.”

When Art Club leaves to go back home, the artists have a couple solo projects to work on and then will be joining forces again for a sand sculpting competition at The Point in Saginaw from July 10 through 12.

The team will be back to the U.P. in August for the U.P. State Fair.