Japanese Pay Tribute to America in Sand
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For the past decade, a group of sand sculpture artists gather [in Tottori] every year for two weeks at the world’s only indoor sand museum to mount an exhibit of improbably intricate tableaus, all crafted from about 3,000 tons of sand.
This year, 19 artists from countries including Canada, China, Italy, the Netherlands and Russia traveled to Tottori to sculpt scenes on the theme of the United States. Previous themes have included Africa, Russia and South America.
Working nine hours a day, the artists — five of whom are from the United States — built, among other things, Mount Rushmore, the New York skyline (yes, Trump Tower makes an appearance), oversize busts of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, scenes from the gold rush and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Curiously, with such an international crew, [museum director] Chaen has never invited a Japanese artist to sculpt in Tottori.
“I am not intentionally excluding Japanese artists,” he said. “But at this moment I don’t think any Japanese artists have risen to the top level yet.”
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Tottori doesn't have many inhabitants, but it has sand, lots and lots of sand. It sits near a national park replete with sand dunes. However the artists can't use any of that sand which is protected by its park status. Instead Tottori has preserved tons of sand excavated during a road-building project about a decade ago. They reuse the same sand every year, so these works of art are obliterated after an eight-month display.
“One attraction of the sand sculptures is their frailty,” said Yoshihiko Fukazawa, the mayor of the city of Tottori, the capital of the prefecture. “All the forms will eventually disappear or degrade or collapse.” Treasuring that impermanence, he said, is “a Japanese virtue.”
The Times shows these artists' works in one of its 360 degree movies:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/...pans-sand.html