Our Artist Reception sponsor Las Montanas will have a 8x8x12 foot block on theMountain Village Heritage plaza sculpted into the classic VW bus parked and readied for a day of surfing. Tom Alpern will be the lead sculpture coming from wining Aspens WinterSculpt competition twice and being invited to Breckenridge's World Snow sculpting Championships. Tom is an animator, filmmaker, glass blower, and snow sculptor. Since graduation from Rhode Island School of Design, Tom has been chasing artistic satisfaction, extreme recreation, and interpersonal bliss! Boot Doctor will have last years winning sculptor, Duncan Mackenzie. His 8x8x8 foot sculpture, as are all the competing sculptors below, will be located near the Beach at the bottom of chair 4. Duncan Mackenzie holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Since being in Telluride he has received a grant from TCAH to build a public sundial in mountain village, was in the As The Crow Flies show at the Ah Haa school as well as the first place winner of last years snow sculpture event. He also designs exterior environments with a focus on sacred alignments with an integration of landscape design with sculptural installations. He specializes in glass and stone and has had a glassblowing and sculpture studio in Santa Cruz CA for the last 15 years. Richard Arnold will be sculpting for Teslki's sponsorship located also near the Beach at the bottom of chair 4. This is Richards second year competing and this years sculpture will be located next to the Diggity Dog cart near the Beach at the bottom of chair 4. The son of a Colorado coal miner, Richard Arnold has enjoyed earlier careers in both the construction and aviation industries. He has lived in many parts of the United States, and studied with noted artists. Currently Richard is finishing a veterans' memorial for the town of Fruita, Colorado and enjoys traveling with his wife Marshall. You can also see his work as Sophia stands at the bus stop near the Telluride Middle/High School. Mountain Village will be sponsoring the Mountain Schools middle school/high school art classes with the first sculpture to be created on the snow at the base of chair lift 4. Craig Wasserman is the schools art teacher and he will be wrangling approximately 20 students in their creation. His goal has been to let the kids lead the creative process in developing this project and it's a chance of a lifetime for these kids to put it all together. American National Bank will see Beth Ballis and Ted Moews sculpting their creation, which has a preliminary design of being something really fantastic. This one is located at he top of the Meadows lift in the Mountain Village's Town Plaza. Beth has lived in the Telluride region since 1992. Although her most recognized accomplishment in the art world would be her Masters degree from Harvard University's School of Design in Landscape Architecture, she states her greatest artistic accomplishments can be attributed to the Halloween costumes she has created for her two children over the past ten years. Living a wilderness lifestyle the past 11 years which involved snowmobile/ski access only to her home 6 months of the year, she is sure to bring a fresh yet familiar perspective to snow art. Ted started early in sculpting, he built his first log cabin when he was 13 and moved on to complete 2 degrees in fine art from the University of Denver and UCLA. Ted also has spent time cowboying/rodeoing, raising buffalo and raising a family in his hand notched log cabin at 10,000 feet.