New Brunswick’s Bay of Fundy tides have swept in another year of the annual Sand Sculpture Festival at New River Beach Provincial Park.
On the first day of the festival, 60 tonnes of sand were transformed into a giant sculpture on the Saint John boardwalk.
On the second day, sand sculpting masters took the whole day sculpting their creations and onlookers spent the day at the beach.
The third day saw the final sculptures washed away, created by three two-person teams of masters who competed for the golden shovel while amateurs competed on the other side of the beach.
The master teams consisted of Dan Belcher and Thomas Koet, David Ducharme and Susanne Ruseler and Guy Oliver Deveau and Isabelle Gasse.
Overall, the weekend ended with a three-way tie between all of the master teams, each of them earning the same number of points over the whole event.
The artists were awarded a trophy created by Glass Roots Canada, a glass art company in Saint John. The trophy contains sand from New River Beach inside.
The winners of the Sunday competition were Belcher and Koet from Florida. Their sculpture depicted a man and woman entangled by their hair.
The other sculptures depicted a kid sleeping surrounded by sheep and a boat being consumed by the waves.
Koet said sculpting is everything to him. He travels all over the world to sculpt and he said he loves to sculpt with his family, his friends and his wife.
Belcher has similar feelings about the art of sculpting.
“It’s physical. It’s mental. It’s creative. It’s camaraderie,” Belcher said. “We get to work with hundreds of different sculptors all around the world and so many different places. We get to travel the world and we get to be creative.”
The master sculptors were at the beach from 8:30 a.m. until the tide came up at 6 p.m. Koet said sand sculpting is difficult because you can’t predict how the sand is going to act.
“Today we took off the bottom forms that we used to pack in the sand and there were cracks appearing all over our sculpture, and we were afraid it was going to fall,” Koet said. “So we really had to think on our feet and come up with a way to save our sculpture.”
The amateur competition’s sculptures, though less formidable than the masters’, still reached the same fate at the hands of the ocean at the end of the day.
Koet said the fact of the sculptures’ impermanence is what makes the art special.
“I see sand sculpting like you would see Christmas or Thanksgiving with your whole family,” Koet said. “It’s lots of work, lots of preparation, and you enjoy it for only a little bit, then it’s gone and nothing but memories are left.”
Brendan McGuire, a member of the organizing committee for the Bay of Fundy Sand Sculpture Festival who works with New Brunswick’s Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture, said that he had a wonderful week with the artists.
He said the competition is the pinnacle of joy at New River Beach. He said he’s really happy with the public’s support of sculptors and their enthusiasm for sculpting.
“We’re extremely proud of this park,” he said. “We’re extremely proud of the over 30 years of sand sculpting that we’ve had out here.”
He said the park staff look forward to the next year of sculpting and hope to welcome all the master artists back in 2027.
McGuire also said he always thinks he knows a lot about sand, but when he spends time with sculptors, he learns more. Sometimes, he learns more than he wants to.
“Every night, if you think you’re going to bed by yourself, nope. There are always all those crumbs of sand in your bed,” McGuire complained. “For the next few weeks I’m going to find sand in my car, in my bed, in my clothes and in my hair. The sand isn’t going anywhere.”
