kanpur the ghats of the ganges are these days dotted with beautiful sculptures made by sand artistes who are giving shape to their creative ideas with an aim to start a new art culture in kanpur and to also make the ghats attractive and cleanmonika mishra an artist and a masters student of arts from dav degree college is one of these artists during a sand sculpturing event organised by the arts department of our college i was instantly attracted to this creative art now some of my college mates and i regularly make sculptors on the banks of the river ganga says monika adding that the aim of these artists is to attract the attention of art lovers and also to create awareness about pollution in river ganga i have noticed that people in the city appreciate our efforts and a few also help us in making sculptures adds manika whose next set of sculpture would be to inspire people to save the gangetic dolphinsparul jain another artist from the city is also engaged in the art form sand sculpturing is really difficult in comparison to painting and other arts it requires a lot of physical effort says she adding the biggest task is to clean the ghat and then to dig the surface to get clean sand for making the sculptures also we have to bring water in buckets from the river because we have to make the sand wet to mould it into the desired shape though it involves a lot of hard work but we all feel that it is worth the effort because it not only makes the banks beautiful but it also motivates people to not dirty the ghatcalling it a unique form of art which can be utilized to spread social awareness for causes local artist siddhant prakash says with my sand sculptures i have depicted the pain of the ganga at the increasing pollution similarly we have also shown how important it is to save the girl child with our sand sculptures we have paid tributes to leaders like subhash chandra bose and mahatama gandhi now we also plan to spread awareness about crime against women in society and the social evil of dowry though our artfor artist pramod kumar an ma in arts the reason for taking up sand art was also to provide his peers and himself a place to display their talent kanpur is a huge city but the irony is that the city does not have a single art gallery where artists can display their art so i thought why not convert the ghats into an art gallery i started with sand sculpturing and was pleasantly surprised with the support that i started getting from the locals they not only helped me in digging out clean sand but also helped me in getting water for itkanpurites may be appreciative of the efforts of these artists but the city administration has still to take note of them mizna khan