Some Nice Sand Sculptures

We are traveling around Vancouver Island this month, as we have done the past few summers. Last weekend we saw the international sand sculpting contest in Parksville. 

These are not sand castles, these are serious sculptures. The contestants come from all over-Netherlands, Belgium, Florida, Canada, California, Russia and more. Some people compete on their own, others work In teams of two. Everyone has three full days (30 hours) to complete their work. This year we visited Parksville three times to watch how the work progressed. The first time they were delivering the sand and setting up with bulldozers.   

Each contestant gets a big pile of special sand. It is not ordinary beach sand. It is stickier and they have to use every bit of it. No leftovers allowed. After completion, the sculptures are sprayed with a glue so they can be viewed for a month. My last visit was 4 days after they were finished and they were still perfect. 

This year the theme was Wild Things. 

We wanted to watch the artists turning the sand into art so our second visit to the sculptures was when the pieces were only half done.  

This is my favorite sculpture with the artist. A wild and free woman with her DNA or cells evolving. I thought it was very artistic and was disappointed that she didn't win first place, only third. But to be fair it was a one sided sculpture and some were two sided. 

The completed piece. 

 I  This was another prize winner.  The photo above shows the artists examining their work before it was finished. This is a two sided sculpture of a wild tortoise. This side is a natural. The other side shows...

... a turtle assembled from ocean junk people throw in the water. 

This sculpture won first prize in the couples division. 

These Russian sculptors started with a famous classical statue and made her wilder. 

In the above photo the two artists are hard at work.

Below is the famous statue of the classical fertility goddess, Artemis. These artists based their sand sculpture on this bust. Hah- I guess there is some kind of pun there. 

This is not my picture. It is a random one from the internet. Actually, I have taken photos of this same statue from my trip to Ephesus in Turkey some years ago. But sometimes the problem with having 33,000 photos on my computer is it is hard to find the one I want when you want it. 

A few more Wild Things. 

Here we have a fish being eaten by a bird being eaten by a cat being eaten by a something (wolf? being eaten by a bear being eaten by a person.

This Jimi Hendrix inspired sculpture was the first place winner. If you look closely you can see his hair is made up of animals. 

This is the Parksville public beach where the contest is held. Not as dramatic or solitary as Tofino which we visited last week but it is a nice community beach. The water is quite shallow so you can walk quite far without getting in very deep.