who is Carl Jara

aka Grain Damaged

For more than half my life I've been traveling the world sculpting sand.

As a kid growing up in the greater Cleveland area, a crate of Legos and a sketch pad were my constant companions. I knew even then I wanted to pursue a career in the arts.

I went to high school with the sole focus of making art, taking and retaking every art course in the school curriculum. In an act of desperation my teacher sent me to work with the stage crew lead by Tom Morrison; firefighter and President For Life of the International Association of Sand Castle Builders. He took me under his wing, teaching me the basics of both sand sculpting and business.

After high school, I moved on to a fine arts education at the Myers School of Art in Akron, Ohio, studying illustration and Graphic Design, all the while working with Tom and being introduced to an ever-growing world wide community of professional sand sculptors. When it came time for my BFA exhibition, I sadly realized I had neither the desire nor the talent to become an illustrator or graphic designer, but I did posses a desire to sculpt. My fifteen foot sand sculpture in the school gallery graced the front pages of local newspapers, and was broadcast across the region on network news television. I guess that was really the defining moment that launched my career.

I've now been sculpting sand for over three decades, working and competing in more than a dozen countries and three dozen states. I've earned nearly a hundred medals, fourteen of them being from the World Championships, and have been featured in four seasons of Sand Blasters and Sand Wars on the Travel Channel. I’ve had a book written about me and my work has been posted across the web from Juxtapose to the Huffington Post, I was even trending on Yahoo not long ago.

When I'm not sculpting sand you can find me building exhibits at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History or in my studio creating unique sculptural furniture entirely by hand.