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Murmansk hosts snow and ice sculptures festival

At the SnowIce festival, 24 artists from Russia, Estonia and Latvia made snow compositions from three-meter cubes

MURMANSK, January 28. /TASS/. Harsh weather could not stop artists from Russia, Latvia and Estonia to make snow and ice figures at a festival in the Murmansk Region. Two competitions - SnowIce and Crazy Saw - finished in Kirovsk on Sunday, the Snow Village project’s Deputy Director Maria Vasilyeva told TASS.

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"The freezing cold could not stop either the artists or the audience," she said. "The festival was exciting and beautiful."

At the SnowIce festival, 24 artists from Russia, Estonia and Latvia made snow compositions from three-meter cubes. After a few days of work, they presented sculptures to the audience and the jury. The winners were announced on Sunday. A team from Yekaterinburg (Matvey Vavayev and Sergei Nikolayev) won the first prize with a composition, called "No Bite."

The Crazy Saw competition featured five teams, uniting 10 carvers, who were to cut scenes from ice walls two by three meters’. The winners were Ivan Loktyukhin (Khabarovsk) and Elena Timofeyeva (Petrozavodsk). A similar competition in Apatity was a day earlier - there the winners were sculptors from Ryazan and St. Petersburg.

History of annual competitions SnowIce and Crazy Saw began in 2011. The events continue the Snow Village project, where artists cut a building of ice and snow, with halls, isles, ornaments, bas-reliefs and sculptures. In 2019, the SnowIce festival was announced among Russia’s TOP-200 events of the year and received the National Event of the Year title.

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