About festival
12th International Ice sculptures festival
12th International Ice sculptures festival will take part February 12 - 14 in Uzvaras park, Jelgava, Latvia. The organizer of the festival is Jelgava municipal agency “Kultūra”. International Ice sculpture festival in Jelgava was first Ice festival in Latvia. Now it is grown up and builds its popularity and is well recognized cultural event with wide resonance. In Latvia it is only Ice sculpture festival with professional artist participation.The 12th International Ice Sculpture festival year by year strengthened the artistic identity of the festival and prestige, promoted the reputation, attendance and popularity of Jelgava City.
Previous festival
The 11th International Ice Sculpture festival took place from 9th till 15th February, 2009 . Theme of previous festival was “Galaxy of Love”, it was like motive to look at nowadays people relationships. Developement of information technologies create human of 21st century who grab world like audiovisual body. Technologies more and more fill our weekday and soon peoples life equally will take place in reality and virtuality. Developing this tendency, people easily make business, shoping, paying bills and even their relationships is easy to build with mediation of electronic media. In the same way love is subjest to technology influence. Therefore closing event of the festival will occure at St. Valentines Day to remind everybody basis of love.
Individual sculptures will be made from high quality manufactured ice made by company “Frostiart Baltic”, but team sculptures from natural ice blocks which were cut from a lake in Finland by company “Blue Ice art Pello” and before the festival it was transported to Jelgava. In festival participated 30 sculptors from Great Britain, Russia, Netherlands, Ireland, Austria, Belarus, Latvia and Lithuania will take part in this festival.
Summarizing the media and statistic data we can affirm that 11th International Ice Sculpture festival was very good attended event in Jelgava and Zemgale Region and provides approximately 42000 visitors. According to inquiry, festival was well attended by foreign visitors from many countries – Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, and Great Britain.
History of festival
Beginning of the festival was in year 1997 when Jelgava cultural centre organize first “Ice Sculpture festival” in Jelgava and it will be annual event as a tradition of Jelgava City, because it provide citizens and mass media interest and support in Zemgale Region. Ice sculpture festivals are very popular in many European countries, but it is unique for Latvia in its multiple festival panoramas.
In first Ice sculpture firs festival in Jelgava there was only two artists – Anrijs Opincans and Rinalds Opincans who was nearly graduated Academy of Arts. They create 10 ice sculptures which dimensions was only 0,75 x 0,5 m.
In next years we invite ice sculptors from Northern countries where is strong and long-lasting ice carving traditions, and in this way we obtain international experience in this field. Our festival have visited Barbo Behm who is president of Sweden Ice and Snow sculpture association, she was in festivals jury and give advices about organizing things.
During these years our festival was growing up and building its popularity in Latvia. Every next year we involve artists from Northern Europe and other European countries and now each year we have artists from more than 10 countries.