BRADFORD sculptor Jamie Wardley has created a poignant tribute to grieving widows of the First World War - out of ten tonnes of sand.

Called Loss Is Eternal, the sculpture depicts the moment when the wife of a soldier opens a letter bearing the words: 'We regret to inform you you that your husband has been killed in action'.

The sculpture, which will stand in the courtyard of Hebden Bridge Town Hall for the next three months, was designed by Jamie and his Sand In Your Eye team.

“I will re-work the sculpture on two occasions over coming months - one of which will co inside with Remembrance Day - during which the woman will become middle-aged then elderly," said Jamie. "This is to signify that, although people learn to cope with loss, the hurt that we feel through tragedy is eternal and never leaves us.

"Loss is Eternal is part of Sand In Your Eye’s ‘We Are Human’ series commissioned by Hebden Royd Town Council to commemorate the centenary of WW1."

Jamie's striking ice and sand sculptures include a giant 'bust' of Charles Darwin, a model of the Himalayas made from 250 tonnes of sand, and a hotel carved entirely of ice from the Baltic Sea.

Last summer he paid tribute to the D-Day landings with a series of sand drawings on a Normandy beach. He and a team of volunteers created 7,500 silhouettes of bodies scattered across the beach, highlighting the loss of life in the Second World War. The two-dimensional body shapes, created from raking up sand, were later covered by the tide.

The sculpture was hailed as one of the top ten art installations in the world that year and featured in TIME magazine.

Jamie, a former Buttershaw School pupil, discovered sand sculpting in Norway. He met sand sculptor Daneel Foyer working in the street and was invited to his Oslo studio to try it for himself.

"There was a pile of sand, I made a large sculpture of a woman and was surprised by how she looked, " recalled Jamie, who works as a sand sculptor around the world.

He has worked with Aardman, the creators of Wallace and Gromit, and has turned sand into the Statue of Liberty, a Wild West saloon, the Egyptian Sphinx and a 'Ghost Ship' stretching 400 metres across the beach at Barry Island.

"I like working with both ice and sand because they're very different, " said Jamie. "With sand you get subtle expressions and catch the shadows. With ice, once you've chipped away it's gone, but it's beautiful and strong."

For more information visit sandinyoureye.co.uk