For the second year in a row, the Kirksey Architecture + Metzger Construction team took home the coveted Golden Bucket award at the AIA Sandcastle Competition. The team also won Best Team T-Shirt and Kidtastic! - Disney Edition, a new competition category, for their sandcastle creation at Saturday's event in Galveston.

This year, the Kirksey + Metzger team did Finding Gory, a play on the Disney/Pixar animated sequel to Finding Nemo, complete with Dory, the lovable, but forgetful blue tang fish, but incorporated a wicked, comically dark spin featuring some of Disney’s villains from the sea. 

"Kirksey has a tradition of putting a twist on our sandcastle theme to help the work stand out from the crowd,” Kirksey's Cynthia Helms says. “Sometimes it's through mixing two contrasting elements together. This year we turned Finding Dory on its tailfin and used the traditional roles of the characters as they would be in the real world to ignite a scene of energy and gore.