Ohioans don’t have to travel far to see jaw-dropping sand sculptures built by a world champion. In fact, they don’t even have to leave Ohio.
2026 marks the second annual Lake Erie Sand Sculpture Tour, a display of large art sculptures made only of sand and water across multiple parks in Lake County, Ohio. Throughout the tour, all sites are open and attendees are welcome to watch the sculptures being built.
The tour kicked off on June 24 at Lakefront Lodge in Willowick, and ended on July 11 at Headlands Beach State Park in Mentor. Each of the tour’s five locations was strategically picked to highlight different parks and beaches in the county, with the farthest locations being 35 minutes apart.
“We understand that travel costs are up right now, but they’re trying to show that you don’t need to travel very far in order to see a lot of cool stuff,” Carl Jara, one of the sand sculpture artists for the event, said.
The current iteration of the tour started after past sand sculpting events in the area were discontinued.
Headlands Beach State Park used to host a sand sculpting event called Headlands Beach Fest, which stopped in 2023 after flooding and other weather-related issues. The following year, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which owns Headlands Beach State Park, put on a similar event with only one sculpture.
After seeing how popular these sand sculpting events were, the Lake County Visitors Bureau decided to expand the event across multiple locations, Neil Stein, executive director for Tour Lake County, also known as the Lake County Visitors Bureau, said.
The 2025 Lake Erie Sand Sculpture Tour was a success with nearly 25,000 visitors, a majority of them coming from Lake County, but some also from nearby states, Stein said.
Last year, Jara built all four sculptures on his own. This year, he is collaborating on the last two sculptures with Greg Grady, a sand sculpture artist from New Hampshire.
Both Jara and Grady have travelled around the world to build sculptures, including the World Championships of Sand Sculpture Competition. Jara has acquired 14 World Championship medals, and won first place at the 2008 World Championships in Canada. Despite his world travels, he said this event is his dream gig because of its proximity to his home.
“I sleep in my own bed and eat my own food, and carve sand for a few weeks in the summer, and get paid to do it,” Jara said.
For the tour, Jara and Grady get four days to complete each sculpture. This means working all day in the sun. Jara identifies himself as a “desert creature” that can work in hot, dry weather.
Like any master of their craft, Jara and Grady have strategies to make the building go smoothly.
While the sculptures reside on the Lake Erie sands, they’re not always made from it. Like a snowball, the test to see if sand is workable for sculpting depends on whether or not the wet sand from the beach can stick and stay in a ball — if not, it’s time to bring in other sand from a nearby sandyard.
“As a sand sculptor, you’re only as good as your sand,” Grady said.
Grady is a second-generation sand sculptor, taking after his father. The Grady Family organizes and runs the Annual Hampton Beach Master Sand Sculpting Classic in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire.
“I always helped out on projects, I knew all the sand sculptors, I knew how to sand-sculpt. I never really thought that it was going to be my full-time career,” Grady said.
Jara has also been building with sand since he was a kid. He said his mentor, Tom Morrison, taught him how to build sand sculptures. He would practice in Morrison’s sand driveway. He went to school for Graphic design, but ultimately realized that his passion lay in sand sculpting.
While Stein provides themes for the tour, the sculptors ultimately have freedom over their designs as long as they tie in to the location or timing of the event.
For example, this year for America’s 250th Birthday, Jara created a version of “George Washington Crossing the Delaware,” the famous painting that represents America’s victory in the Revolutionary War. This sculpture is at Lakefront Lodge in Willowick.
And in Bill Stanton Community Park in Madison, a sculpture of dog owners with their dogs is an ode to the 2026 Regatta Classic Dog Show, which also takes place in the park.
While the last sculpture for the 2026 tour was completed in Headlands Beach State Park on July 11, it’s not the last chance to see the artwork. According to Stein, they often stay intact for weeks and even months, though over time they will start to wear down due to weather and site conditions.
Stein hopes that when people come to Lake County, they stop and stay a while, maybe to grab some ice cream or eat at a local restaurant.
“So many people get in their little bubbles, and if you live in one city, you don’t travel too far outside of it within your community,” he said. “So that’s why we try to highlight some of these parks that maybe aren’t as busy or ‘popular’ as other ones, but they’re gorgeous.”
