Dawson List
22 Years Experience
New Orleans, LA
Male, 52
For more than 2 decades, I've been an ice sculptor, mostly for events in and around New Orleans. This means that if it can be made of ice and it's fun, I've probably made it for some crazy all-out party. I am a gold medal ice carver and my teammates and I also have a Guinness World Record for the world's longest ice bar. In 2004, I was ohh, so close to winning a world championship in Alaska. Alas, we came in second...maybe next time. But want to know something about ice sculptures? Ask me!
Well, if using an ice sculpture to propose counts as wooing, then yes. It was an angel holding the ring frozen in and yeah, it worked ;)
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This is a tricky question and I'm going to avoid answering part of it, because in at least one case, I believe I have a good idea and this is not exactly a private conversation! But it certainly made me think about many of the sculptures that I've contemplated for various situations and I'll willingly sacrifice a couple of my ideas on the altar of a halfway decent answer. WARNING: If you aren't particularly interested in the minutiae of ice sculpture design concepts you might find this answer overly long and tedious. Most of the other answers in my thread aren't as long winded... Most of the crazy sculpture designs that I've considered are centered on competitions. Crazy, genuinely dangerous sculptures aren't a good idea in most instances because there are liability issues to consider. But at competitions, everybody that will be touching the sculptures sign waivers and are usually experienced. Spectators aren't permitted to get close; otherwise bad things can happen. (Exhibit A: our "beautiful chemistry" sculpture that I mention in a couple of other answers; somebody apparently touched it at a bad time or in a bad way while taking a photo and it came down.) And in competition a high risk tolerance can be rewarding, as long as you pull it off. So there are two concepts that I've kept coming back to over the years. Each time the idea changes a little. Hopefully, eventually, I'll get sick of playing with the ideas and give them a try. But I haven't so far. Now as ice sculptures go, the basic ideas are far from creative or original. I've seen both of my proposed subjects carved before. But I'd like to give them my own spin, and my versions are somewhat more daring than what I've seen so far. Well, at least they are in my head… Idea one: Pegasus This winged horse of Greek mythology has been carved many times in competition; I've even tried it before. But I've never seen it carved where it's supported by little more than its wings. Done right, this piece could be very daring and exciting. Done wrong and it could be a visual mess, even if it doesn't collapse. Generally, one of the best parts of Pegasus in ice are the wings, extended outward and upward, with delicately detailed feathers. But by supporting it with the wings you're taking maybe the best parts of the sculpture and putting them near the base, where their impact can easily be lost. And if the wings are too thick, like they should be if they're supporting a horse, then they don't look like wings. So I've played with various ideas and I've even considered hollowing out the horse so that it would be extremely light. But that's pretty difficult and time consuming and most competitions are intentionally short. So I'm still considering this piece… Idea two: Icarus (winged man falling from the sky) Icarus has also been carved many times and figures with wings are kind of a tired concept at competitions. But again, I'm looking at a very delicate support structure for the piece. His head would be toward the bottom of the piece and if I'm not careful with the design, I'll likely get the dreaded "What is it?" question. People will generally only look at an ice sculpture for a few seconds to try to figure out what it is before those words pop out of their mouth. Part of my job as an ice sculptor is to help them quickly understand what they're looking at. Bad design makes this tough. So when I'm finally happy with my design, maybe I'll give this one a try…someday. Pegasus and Icarus would probably be done as smaller sculptures. Physics helps me out here; smaller sculptures are relatively stronger. In contrast, the main idea that I'm holding back is for the big multi-block event in Alaska. I've competed in the event twice, but I've never led a team for that event. These sculptures are huge, so they can be extremely dangerous. And if I'm the team leader, I'd better make sure I know what I'm doing with a daring piece! G-Rose, if you've made it all the way to the end of this, I'm glad you like this thread and thanks for the questions; they've been fun to answer. This one in particular has been rather thought provoking. Got more? Bring em on!
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That's actually a very good question. There are generally two sources for the blocks that ice carvers use day to day. The first is the icehouse style of ice block that is mass produced by ice companies. The old-style icehouses that I occasionally visit in my area have rows and rows of "cans" that are suspended in a freezing solution. These cans are filled with water and freeze solid over the course of a couple of days. They bubble air into the water through long metal tubes that they pull out just before they get frozen in and the water movement caused by the bubbling action helps make the ice clear. However, these blocks rarely are completely clear because salts and air get trapped in the center. So they end up looking like a mostly clear block of ice with a white core in the center. These blocks are relatively cheap, but they're often not ideal for carving because of the white portion in the center. The other main source for carving blocks are specialized ice block makers called Clinebell machines (although Clinebell Equipment Company no longer makes all the machines). Blocks from these machines are slowly frozen completely clear over three or four days and the machine is set up in such a way that you can freeze stuff into the block as it's being made. (Ice carvers freeze all kinds of stuff into ice blocks for events.) Each of the machines only makes one or two blocks at a time, and they take longer and the blocks are usually better quality, so the blocks are more expensive when sold. But because the machines are smaller and self-contained, ice sculpting companies are often able to own their own block machines rather than buy blocks from an ice company. Both the can blocks and the Clinebell blocks are of a similar size and usually weigh somewhere between 250 and 400 lbs. The "standard" is 300 lbs. These blocks, however, are tiny compared to the giant blocks we carve in Alaska, or the ones they use to build the ice hotels in Sweden and elsewhere. The blocks we use in Alaska are harvested from a frozen pond using heavy equipment and might weigh anywhere from almost two tons to over three. The ones used for the Swedish ice hotel come from the Torne River. There are also a few giant ice block machines in the world that make blocks of a similar size to the natural Alaskan and Swedish blocks.
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In the pic that is/was on the front of the site where I'm carving a dog with a chainsaw, that's a standard Stihl electric chainsaw, which is a very high quality saw that costs about 3 times more than a Craftsman saw, for example. Ice carvers do tend to modify their chainsaws, however, especially the chains. We take off a lot of the safety features so that the saw will cut faster. Most of these safety features are designed to protect woodcutters from kickback, which is where the saw tip comes back at the operator so hard and so fast that it's impossible to stop; very dangerous! Ice doesn't create kickback like wood does though, so we don't need the kickback safety features; they just slow us down, and a lot of the time, we're kind of in a hurry!
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In the scenario that you're describing, it's unlikely that there was a change in the sculpture, unless it snowed or somebody broke it (that has happened, although not to me). But over a longer period, even if it stays below freezing, the ice can change, mainly in two different ways. The first is sublimation, where the solid ice doesn't melt but goes straight to vapor. This happens more if it's very dry or there's a lot of air movement (which is why you have to wrap sculptures in a walk-in freezer). Or, if the sculpture is exposed to direct sun, and it's below freezing, but not too far below, the sunlight will start causing small fractures inside the ice. As the exposure to the sun continues, more and more fractures show up, they'll start to join, and the ice will get "gray" and much more fragile. Eventually, it might even turn white and be extremely fragile. So protection from sunlight is important for longer competitions, except when it's extremely cold. Oh, I almost forgot. There is one other thing that could happen, but that happens only when certain circumstances are met. Oddly enough, ice will bend. This is called "ice creep" and has actually been used in the construction of a building from ice; they needed the ice to bend so that it would curve into the right shape for the building structure. My main ice creep experience was in 2009 when we made the "beautiful chemistry" sculpture that I mention in another answer. The top of the sculpture stretched out unsupported for quite a ways and and as it turned out, one part of the sculpture started to bend, apparently as soon as we finished working on it. In a 24 hour period, the tip moved about 20 inches. I was curious about whether it would keep going, but I had to leave Alaska not long after and apparently the sculpture collapsed the next day when somebody touched it while taking a photo. So I never found out how much further it would go. But extreme ice bending doesn't happen very often, although it is an issue at times. So I suppose the correct answer to your question is: the sculpture would not remain EXACTLY the same. But except in unusual circumstances, you probably wouldn't notice the difference.
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I've been expecting this question to show up sooner or later ;) The raciest sculptures that I've made are exactly the ones that you think that I've carved: the anatomically correct ones. Most of them are ice luges too. All kinds of parties go on in New Orleans and for some of those parties, those sculptures are a perfect fit.
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I'd say that it usually takes 1-2 hours to do most of the sculptures that I do for weddings or parties. That's only the carving time though. That doesn't count any design time, tool set up time, clean up time (lots of clean up time!), transportation/delivery time, or set-up/break down time. So it sounds awesome: less than a couple of hours of work and you're on to the next one! But there's a lot of logistic and creative time that's harder to tally. But I can carve a sculpture pretty fast if I have to. More than once, I've competed in events that give you about 10 minutes to complete a carving. That's pretty much a chainsaw start to finish sculpture; no time for little tools. Regarding the second part of your question, there are only two kinds of ice carvers: those who have broken one at the last minute and those that are going to soon. It's part of working with a fragile medium that might be deteriorating as you work on it. One time I was really happy with an eagle that I'd made and I was sliding it across a tile floor into the freezer. Let's just say that I learned not to slide ice sculptures across tile floors any more. The little drop-offs and hard, unforgiving surface of a tile floor can be deadly to sculptures. Most of the time though, sculpture breaks happen on the way to set up. I sent a friend of mine to go set up a Marilyn Monroe sculpture and a Statue of Liberty sculpture along with a few others. We insulated them and put them in the back of a closed trailer. However, our efforts to secure them apparently weren't good enough and he said what when he got there, it looked like they'd spent the trip fighting it out. Somehow though, he managed to put things back together somewhat, and he salvaged the sculptures. Never saw how those turned out in the end; kind of curious about that...
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