Sand artist breaks own record with Jesus replica

Internationally acclaimed sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik has walked into the Limca Book of Records once again by creating a 35 feet high and 75 feet wide sand replica of the Jesus Christ on the sea beach of Puri, the Odisha temple town and a popular tourists’ hub of eastern India.

The huge sand structure has been created on the occasion of Christmas which was celebrated across the globe on Wednesday. “I have dedicated the structure to world peace”, the Puri based award winning sand artist told Deccan Herald over telephone.
With his latest creation Pattnaik surpassed his own world record which was created on the same Puri beach during Christmas of 2007. He then had enrolled his name into the Limca Book by creating a 22 feet high sand structure of the Jesus.

“I had obtained the official permission from the Limca Book of Records before creating the latest structure and breaking my own world record”, Pattnaik said. He has seven more records to his name which include creation of maximum number of sand structures of Santa Claus - 500 to be precise - at one go.  It was showcased in Puri during last year’s Christmas.

Pattnaik used as many as 1000 tonnes of sand to create the 35 feet Jesus structure with the help of 25 of his students from his Puri-based sand art school. It took the team three days of hard work to complete the giant size Jesus.