PORT ANGELES — People attending the Arts in Action sand-sculpting competition agreed with the judges Sunday:
Canadian Karen Fralich’s “Horsin’ Around” was the best work of the weekend.
Fralich won the People’s Choice award that added $750 to the $1,750 she captured as the show’s champion the day before.
She won by a 1,500-vote margin out of about 4,000 votes.
“I’m ecstatic, very happy, thrilled,” she said Sunday as the festival wound down.
It was her first entry in Arts in Action, and she credited her twin wins to “good karma.”
“It was a really, really tough playing field out there, some fantastic carvers.” said Fralich, who enters about seven contests a year.
Second place and $1,200 went to Fred Dobbs for his “Moovin’ & Groovin’.” Daman Langlois won third place and $900 for “Pumpkin Prize.” Both men are from Victoria.
Other contestants were awarded $650 each.
Although Arts in Action added three sand sculptors to the eight it featured last year, fewer people — from 15,000 to 17,000 — attended the three-day fiesta.
Doc Reiss, co-chair of the Nor’wester Rotary Club-sponsored event, blamed the weekend’s 90-degree temperatures that passed for a heat wave in Port Angeles.
Reiss was upbeat, however.
“The people who came, they came to see art,” he said.
“Even though the crowd was about half the size of last year’s, the merchants did very well, the food vendors did very well.”
The sand sculptures will remain at City Pier/Hollywood Beach for a week, Reiss said, with their titles and artists’ and sponsors’ names.
