To the casual beachgoer, sand seems like an unlikely medium for art — loose, crumbly, gone with the next wave. But to sand sculptors, it's precisely that fragility that makes the craft so demanding, and so rewarding when done well. The process starts long before any shaping begins. Professional sand sculptors don't simply pile up beach sand; they compact it, often using a technique called "pluffing," where wet sand is packed into wooden forms in thin layers, each one tamped d