Majestic snow orca sculpture appears on Vancouver beach

A new snow sculpture on Vancouver’s Jericho Beach is captivating local residents.

The piece, made of snow and sand, depicts an orca emerging from the ocean.

It is the work of artist Aaron Cambrin, a self-described orca fan.

“I wanted to make sort of like a tribute to one of the large orcas, a transient orca named Chainsaw, who is a large male orca, a transient orca that has a really large fin that has two chips in it,” he said.

“That’s why he’s named Chainsaw.”

He begins his process the same way one might if they are building a snowman, starting with a snowball.

But not just any snowball will do.

“Well, they’ve got to be pretty easy to mould out of. A good way to know is just to scoop one up and look at that with not a flake falling down,” he said. “That’s how we know you can just really pack it down and make a good structure out of it.”

People were dropping by the piece all day Thursday to check it out.

“It’s absolutely amazing,” one admirer told CityNews. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. I thought it was actually built out on the water or came out of the water.”

Creating the snow orcas is demanding work but worth it, Cambrin says. The Chainsaw sculpture is a few days old, and the artist returned to the beach Thursday to shape another orca from the snow.