Nothing beats the quality of Maui dune sand. Sand sculptor Jill Harris swears by it.

Beach sand is round from being tumbled by waves, and working with it is akin "to stacking marbles," Harris says. But the golden-brown dune material’s irregular grain binds well, perfect for her work at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel through the past five years.

Regular hotel visitors are familiar with Harris’ Christmas-themed sculptures, and she will be back in November to start another holiday design using the same eight tons of sand she and partner Thomas Koet used last week to create a work inspired by the Merrie Monarch hula festival.

The lobby sculpture, titled "Hula Kahiko," is 8 feet tall and 41⁄2 feet wide and depicts a male dancer kneeling on one side of an oversize curving leaf and a female dancer on the other. The piece is elegantly shapedand features realistic detail work in the dancers’ faces and the lei that adorn the figures.

Harris and Koet began their work July 8 and finished two days later. With a clear barrier placed around it, the sculpture should remain intact and undisturbed until the sculptors return later this year.

"For the work that we do here, I always try to focus on Hawaii and honor its culture," Harris said during a brief break from sculpting. "I give it the utmost respect, whether it’s tiki carvings, a luau setting with a roasted pig, a vintage postcard or here with hula — whatever kind of theme that would make a nice sculpture."

For their newest work, "Thomas and I worked off photos of dancers from the festival, and I also spoke to people here at the hotel who work in hula to make sure that we got the forms correctly."

For fine detail work and shaping, they used masonry trowels; palette knives used by artists; spoons; and even dental tools. They finished the work with touch-ups last week, small bucket of sand and water in hand and a sprayer at the ready.

Even though Harris and Koet are not trained artists — they come from marketing and architectural engineering backgrounds, respectively — they have managed to make an international career for themselves as Sandsational Sand Sculpting.

Harris said their fees range from as little as $1,000 to many thousands of dollars, depending on the size of the job, time involved, the amount of sand to be bought and travel expenses.

Before coming to Hawaii, the pair and a supplemental crew used 160 tons of sand to create a tableau of the signing of the Declaration of Independence that included 27 figures for Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Regatta during the Fourth of July holiday. The project took two weeks.

After leaving the islands Thursday, the two are resting at their Florida home base for a week or so before heading to Italy to help a fellow sculptor do a piece with a Mayan end-of-the-world theme.

Harris said she finds their just-completed hula sculpture appealing because "it makes a big statement, it’s full-figured and it has a nice, strong shape."

And it’s made of just sand and water, with no props or armature. Starting with an octagonal "sandbox," the sculpture was built in layers of sand packed into wooden frames that were then carefully disassembled. It’s designed so as not to collapse under its own weight.

"What I like about what we do is how temporary our artwork is," Harris said. "I compare it to a Thanksgiving dinner or a concert, where the planning and preparation are part of the process. The final result is there only for a short period of time, but if it’s well executed, the memories will last."