Winter Festivals

- around the world -

Winter Festival
A winter festival, winter carnival, snow festival, or frost fair is an outdoor cold weather celebration that occurs in wintertime. Winter festivals are popular in D climates where winter is particularly long or severe, such as Siberia, Scandinavia, Canada and the northern United States. Most winter carnivals involve traditional winter pursuits such as dog sledding, ice hockey, ice carving, skating, skiing, and snow carving. (Wikipedia)

Slip into something warm and gather up your favorite art supplies as we travel online throughout North America and the world exploring and sketching historic winter festival celebrations. The adventurous are unfazed by the cold winds and temperatures and seek out winter festivals. Glistening ice sculptures, twinkly lights, ice bowling, dogsled racing and the polar plunges are just to name a few of these arctic festivities. Many winter festival celebrations are attributed to the Vikings. As world travelers, they shared their customs and seasonal celebrations throughout the world. But several festivals in North America simply began from fur trappers coming into town for the winter fur auctions. Snow and freezing temperatures were very isolating, so to bring the community together and lift spirits towns began adding winter activities.

Saint Paul’s Winter Carnival is the oldest winter festival in the United States. Since 1886, the Saint Paul Winter Carnival brings family-friendly events and community pride to Saint Paul, Minnesota. Showcasing all the beauty of Minnesota winters. St. Paul worked with the City of Montreal which hosts the oldest winter celebration in North American since 1883. Due to a smallpox epidemic which suspended the Montreal Carnival in 1886, Saint Paul was able to lure their ice sculpture architect away to create the first ice castle in the United States. The ice castle cost $5,210 to build and soared to the height of 106 feet.

 [videos] Top 10 Winter Festivals in Europe & St. Paul Winter Festival

Websites with Photos
All Virtual New York Urban Sketchers events are one session (10 am -12 pm EST) held on Saturdays. For participants wanting to challenge themselves sketching more of a particular locality or theme, you are welcome to do the EXTENSION SKETCH PROJECT below:

Winter Festivals Extension Sketch Project:
Choose of the following prompt to sketch:
*Please post your finished sketches to the USk NYC Facebook site. Be sure to add the hash tag #NUS. Please also note that while we are sponsored by USk NYC, our online event is grounded on reference images, which is a very different approach from doing the in-person, on-site urban sketch event promoted by the Urban Sketchers Manifesto.

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Facilitators of Virtual NYC Urban Sketchers:
  • Theresa Smith
  • Lynda Greeley (Mama Bear)
  • Cecilia Evasco (Maricel)
  • Dina Schlesinger
  • Michael Skelly
  • Alan Wernicke
  • Elizabeth Birkby
with the assistance of Mark Leibowitz
founder of USK NYC.
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Web site design by Cecilia Evasco
for Virtual NYC Urban Sketchers
under the auspices of USk NYC.
Scheduled for January 15, 2022

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