When I was younger, I loved to play on the beach.  Swimming in the water, riding the waves, and trying to build sand castles were just too much fun.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at building sand castles, so I never would have made it in the World Sand Sculpture Festival.  I couldn’t even get a decent bucket-shaped tower, let alone something as intricate and detailed as the above artwork.

That’s incredible, isn’t it?  And that’s only one of 19 pieces of art on display.  The organizers of the World Sand Sculpture Festival in Tottori Prefecture, Japan, brought in over 2,400 tons of sand just for this event, and each sculpture took about two weeks to complete.  That’s a staggering amount of work for something that isn’t permanent.

The only question I have left is just how do these sculptures survive?  I didn’t see any awnings or anything, and they’re outside.  What stops the wind from blowing them away?  Or the rain from melting all those carefully-carved details into shapeless blobs?  Maybe they’re using special sculpting sand (with added newspaper perhaps?)  Maybe they touch up the sculptures daily.  No matter how they keep the sculptures up and looking good, I’m impressed.

Tags: sand sculptures, art, beach art, world sand sculpture festival, unusual art, unusual images, folk tales, Tottori, Japan

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