The 12th festival of ice and snow sculptures in Novosibirsk

As it is Old New Year's Eve today, I want to give one more present to my readers.
Within the period from January 8 till the end of the month our city is happy to welcome the 12th festival of ice and snow sculptures.
I wrote about the previous one a year ago, I hope you liked it. If you haven't seen it yet,  here's the link: http://mytravelog.blogspot.com/2011/01/ice-and-snow-wonders-in-novosibirsk.html
Beautiful, isn't it?
This year they are superb, too! And it just cannot be different, snow looks beautiful even unformed, just lying around, and if a sculpture is made from it, it's a work of art, joint creation of man and nature.



Due to some reason this year they haven't given names to the figures, or just haven't indicated them, so you can think of your own name for each figure.
As this year's symbol is dragon, there are several dragons this time. And several figures have some spiritual underlying idea. Or at least I think they are spiritual.
Enjoy watching and come and visit Novosibirsk in January to see them with your own eyes.

It is a long process to create the sculptures. At first snow is put in big wooden cubes and pressed. I haven't got the pictures of the cubes, but imagine objects up to 3 meters high and 2 meters wide.
And the the work begins:

 Snow for the figures can be taken anywhere, but ice is taken from rivers or ponds.

And in a couple of days the masterpieces are presented to the public:

The snake and the Paradise apple, in my opinion

An angel

A dragon

Swans. Or geese?

No idea what it may mean.

In my view it's ascension. My friend thinks it's an angel.

This one has a name. The heart of Asia.

A swan again?

I've tried hard to guess what it is, but failed.

Some fairy tale, I suppose...

Again no idea...

An elephant is only a part of a sculpture, but the whole group was impossible to photograph because of the sun.

And I was there again in the evening, with illumination around. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera with me this time, but the figures will remain there till the end of the month, so I'll try later.