IF Creative Agency

IF Creative agency

Every idea starts with what if

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IF Creative agency

What if you could make anything?

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IF Creative agency

Can you imagine?

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IF Creative agency

We sure can!

IF Creative Agency

IF Creative Agency is a triforce of big dreams, smart arts and a whole lot of experience. A movement of three talented artists who will help you create stunning sculptures, organise impactful events and come up with the best architectural designs.

Meet the minds behind IFCA

Sculpting

Figurative arts

We can carve hyper realistic and fantasy sculptures in sand, snow, ice, concrete and plastics. Each material comes with its own opportunities and challenges we can tell you all about.

Painting

From portraits to scenography

Our visual artists can create stunning paintings, beautiful theater backdrops and mesmerizing murals. You should definitely check out some of their work down below.

Constructing

Architecture at its finest

We love to design buildings, houses, hotels and theme parks. Intergrating art and style results in a powerful synergy which will make your building come to life! We have a rich background in architecture and design and have helped create buildings all over the world.

Organizing

We can organize and promote any creative event for you.

Let us take care of the logistics, the coordination of the sculptors and the artistic part. We will help you find the right balance between resources and the final result. For us the most important part is to create an event that has a future.

Leonardo Ugolini

Art and technical director

Being born, raised and educated in Forli, Italy (1969), Leonardo has always been fascinated by nature and space. Japanese cartoons showed him distant worlds of spaceships and aliens. He spent his childhood drawing, modelling plasticine, playing with Lego and in summer making sand castles at the seaside. He attended the University of Architecture in Florence. Leo has written books and also designed and built his own home following the dictates of bio-architecture and energy efficiency. Architecture influences his sand sculpture as well. He specializes in building large scenic backgrounds and he’s passionate about perspective effects, reliefs and details. He is currently involved in the creation of a card game and a small book for children, always about sand.

Marielle Heessels

Visual artist

Marielle started sandsculpting in 2006. Before that and after, she worked as a widespread visual artist (sculptor and painter) for museums and theme parks. Her inspiration comes from studying nature and her ambition is to show the inner beauty through physical quality. Her extremely sensible artwork embodies a declaration of love to life in general. Marielle loves to work with sand. It gives her the opportunity to work fast and on a big scale. She also feels very confident with the principle of perpetual renewal in sand sculpting. Carving sand gave her the opportunity to work with wonderful people, travel all around the world and see incredible places.

Enguerrand David

Art historian, archeologist and visual artist

Enguerrand always felt attracted by space design. Initially fascinated by architecture and historical heritage, Enguerrand gradually opened himself to the art of sculpting. He discovered the art of sand, ice and snow sculpture in 1999. Since then, he travels the world in company of colleagues that quickly became his best friends.

His university training as an art historian and archeologist has helped him a lot along the way. Enguerrand is known for his multidisciplinary skills (illustrative representations, abstraction, landscaping, etc.), his taste of experimentation (high reliefs, false perspective effects, etc.) and his taste for fooling the public's view.

Meet the minds behind

IF Creative agency

Creativity

The way we work isn’t limited to just carving statues in sand or ice, designing edifices or decorating murals. We fully exploit the technical and creative possibilities offered by each project to lead to true artistic experiences. The interaction with both the environment and the visitors or users, is essential in our unique approach.

Experience

We have more than 20 years experience in the field of sculpting, constructing, painting and organizing artistic events. We’ve been lucky to travel all over the world to create anything you can imagine. This has helped us acquire a lot of knowledge of a wide varity of artistic, organizational and technical principles.

Efficacy

As a team we’ve been working together for many years. We are complementary and efficient since we all have our own specialty. Besides our team, we also have a big network filled with other specialists and technicians which we can ask to join a project if needed. This allows us to complete each project with great efficacy.

Flexibility

By adding flexbility into the mix we can adapt ourselves and our creativity to many situations. This results in an ad hoc approach which allows us to create anything you have in mind.

Go ahead, check it out!

Here’s a glimpse of the stuff we’ve created

We’ve created so many things over the past twenty years that we can’t share it all.
Feel free to explore a few of our personal favourites!

You should definitely hear

What others have to say about working with
IF Creative Agency

'The museum is a world class art museum of some of most impressive sand sculptures around the world. Leonardo collaborates with the museum since the first edition. Enguerrand David, Leonardo Ugolini and Marielle Heessels, each of their skills creating sand sculptures is highly world class, and the combination of their works is brilliant.' 私が手がけている砂の美術館は、世界中の美術館の中で砂像彫刻を展示する最も優れたワールドクラスの美術館です。レオナルド氏は、砂の美術館第1期の展示から制作の中心的な存在として一緒に仕事をしてくれました。マック・デイヴィッド、レオナルド・ウゴリニ、マリエレ・ヒーセルス、この３氏はそれぞれ世界的にも高い砂像彫刻の制作のスキルを持ち合わせ、特に彼らの仕事の組み合わせは目を見張るものがあります。

Katsuiko Chaen / 茶圓勝彦

Producer / director of the sand museum in Tottori, Japan / 砂の美術館 ( 鳥取・日本 ) プロデューサー / ディレクター

'I met Leonardo through the Italian Ministry of Culture. I sent a letter requesting an Italian sculptor who could participate in the world championship and made me the name of Ugolini. In 1998, in the only edition in which he participate, he won the first prize in the architecture section, the first prize for technique without formwork and third prize in the sculpture section.'

Bruno Giannotta

Organizer-President of the world championship of sand sculptures

'Marielle is a well balanced sculptor, with a great sensitivity for human form.'

David Ducharme

Visual Artist & Sculptor

'I have worked with Enguerrand & Leonardo since 2014. At that time, we cooperated together to finish a fantastic project which is considered the first and largest Sand Sculpture Festival in Vietnam. Both Leonardo and Enguerrand are one of the best and unique artists I’ve worked with. For all of my respect and trust to Leonardo and Enguerrand, I guarantee that working with these artists will be truly worth your while and an unforgettable experience.'

Tuan A. Le

CEO of Phan Thiet/Dalat Sand Sculpture Park in Vietnam

'I worked with Enguerrand & Leonardo on a very important project that consider the first and world’s largest Sand Theme Park, Remal International Festival Kuwait. Their professional approach to problem solving, dedication to work and commitment to successful partner relations has made this project a great success. It was a pleasure working with them.'

Yousef Aldaour

Producer of Remal International Festival

'When Enguerrand came in we did not really know what to think about him, but I have to be honest he is a brilliant, patient and gifted guy who made one of our most beautiful monuments in our project: the Norwegian Stave Church. We enjoyed working and talking with Enguerrand and appreciated his judgement highly. Leonardo came in silently and before we were aware of it, he took the responsibility of one of our biggest sculptures and guided an enormous architectural monument: “Egypt”. We consider him as a strong but if necessary flexible artist with a huge talent to oversee his work. In smaller as well as in larger projects he worked with a lot of patience to cooperate with several other artists. We are very thankful for his effort and his leading talent in our project “Zandverhalen” in Elburg.'

Adrianus Peters

Director of Zandverhalen

Check out one of our most

Recent Projects

You can read and watch all about our most recent project by clicking one of the thumbnails below.
Explore which cities and countries we’ve visited, but also which creations we have carved!

Let us tell you a litte bit more about

The amazing projects and people
we had the honour to work for

We’ve been all over the world to do what we love most. From Australia to Canada. From Denmark to Japan. One of the projects we’ve done is Sand Nativity in Scorrano, Italy. The Indian ambassador, Reenat Sandhu, even visited us! You’ll find a glimpse of what it was like in the video.

We'd love to work with you!

Just send us a message

We can help you create anything you can imagine. From carving sculptures to painting, from organizing events to designing and constructing buildings.

In case you have any questions, all you got to do is click the button below and send us an email.

But, you could also

follow us on Social Media

Following us on social media gives you the unique opportunity to follow our works and projects in real time. Don’t miss out and let us take you with us all over the world!

Every idea starts with what if

IF Creative Agency

Meet the minds behind