“The Space Between our hands” was a project that resulted from a month long residency undertaken in Matsudai by Melbourne artists Jeremy Bakker and Ross Coulter, working in conjunction with the curator/co-ordinator Angela Pye. The residency was contingent on the artists fulfilling two criteria; creating a project to involve the aging and depopulated area of Echigo-Tsumari and to make an artwork using snow. The artists engaged with residents throughout the region to collect snow casts of the space between cupped hands. The aim was to create an intimate portrait of the community. The hands, like the face, tell the story of our lives. The casts were stored in snow caves during the residency and were presented at the Echigo-Tsumari Art field Art Snow Festival at the end of February. Embedded deep within the snow covered rice fields, the artists created a space to the dimensions of a Japanese ‘j-ma’ tea room, to exhibit over 400 snow casts collected from the community. The presence of each persons internal world lingered within the snow casts, representative of the community’s resilience and the fragility of our connections with nature and each other. At the conclusion of the Snow Art Festival, the artwork desintergrated and disappeared back into the landscape, melting back into the soil.