2 hours ago
2
Now that’s cool!
A snow pile was shaped into a massive “Snow King” sculpture on a Brooklyn sidewalk – and dozens of people are going out of their way just to catch a glimpse of it.
Roughly 50 gawkers stopped by Sunday to see the sculpture outside of House of the Lord Pentecostal Church on Atlantic Avenue after it was shared widely on Instagram and X.
“It’s very creative, it looks like Poseidon,” said Gautier Ithorotz, who was visiting from Paris. “I don’t know how long it takes to make that, but it’s crazy work.
“We’re just appreciating the creation.” he added of the sidewalk art — which shows the massive face of a bearded, crowned face that its maker says is Lithuanian King Mindaugas.
Three Boerum Hill locals stopped to take pictures — before poking its hollow eyes and stealing its nose.
“It looks like Aquaman,” Clover Li, 25, said. “I want to poke its eyes.”
“It looks like Little Mermaid’s father,” said Adalia Lai, 26.
“I saw this on the WhatIsNewYork Instagram page and thought, ‘no f–king way,'” said one 23-year-old man, who declined to share his name.
He and his girlfriend took a detour from their weekly walk to a nearby Yemeni restaurant in order to ogle the melting “snow king.”
“I think that’s the reason why we decided to come out to walk the two blocks away from where we normally go on our Sunday trip,” the man added. “It’s an abnormal thing.”
Belarusian artist Henrik Lojka made the lifelike snowman over three hours.
“He thought the crown would look really nice against the background of New York,” said Viktoria Lahunova, 38, who was translating for 63-year-old Lojka, a former art teacher in Belarus. “He started with the crown, and he went down.”
Lojka said that before he came to the US in 2021, he created sculptures of characters from Belarusian history out of sand. He previously spent 20 days in prison for speaking out against Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko.
Lojka has also sculpted two busts in front of nearby Belarusian Autocephalous Church on Atlantic Avenue, he said through his interpreter.
“There’s a big, huge problem in Belarus: People forget their roots because we’re losing the power of having our language,” he said through the translator, noting he likes to create works that remind people of Belarusian history as Russian language and culture dominates.
English (US)