Ion's blog

But an unusual outdoor art exhibition called “The Snow Show” has briefly added Kemi and Rovaniemi to the circuit of destinations for adventurous art tourists eager to brave subzero temperatures. Earlier this month, mysterious multicolored sculptures of snow and ice began rising from the frozen landscape. Then, as natural and transient as their setting, the works of art will begin to melt and be gone by early April.

For the next four weeks or so, though, they should stand proud. They come in all shapes and sizes, some abstract, some figurative, but the key variable is their material. Those made of snow are interesting mainly for their geometric forms because, at least from afar, packed snow looks as ordinary as white concrete. Happily, most works have used ice, which exudes an effortless translucent beauty, at times radiating a soft pale green, at other times evoking a shattered window pane.

Yet even when the outcome is less than successful, there is something fresh, almost na