Largest Santa Claus on sand art on Puri beach

Puri, Dec 24 (UNI) International sand artist Sudarshan Pattnaik has made it for spread of peace in the world by creating what he claimed world's largest Santa Claus on sand art on the golden beach of Puri.

As the people from across the country and abroad congregated at this holy city to celebrate Christmas, Sudarshan created sand sculpture of Santa Claus to spread the message of peace to the children the world over.

For the internationally acclaimed sand artist it took almost 40 hours to create a 100 foot long Santa Claus to enter into the ''Limca Book of world Record''.

About 15 students, including 7 girls of his Golden Sand Art Institute, helped him create the sculpture of 100-ft-long, 30-ft-wide and 15-ft-high, using 1,000 tonnes of sand. The sand artist used colour sand to make the image live.

''He chose Puri to create the Santa Claus as the sand art traced back to this pilgrim city as old as 14th century The other attraction was to draw the attention of lakhs of tourists who had arrived to celebrate their Christmas,'' Mr Patnaik said.

Sudarsan has so far participated in more than 31 international sand sculpture championships across the world and won many awards for the country.

His sand sculpture on Black Taj Mahal earned him accolades all over the world.His other creations included tsunami victims in India, endangered Olive Ridley Turtles and dangers of HIV-AIDS and polio.

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