Sunday, March 15, 2015
The World Ice Art Championships Are a Garden of Frozen Delights
The Creators Project: Despite temperatures that threatened to melt their creations, a team from Japan and the United States used hand and power tools to turn 10 blocks of ice into The Fighter, a battle scene between a knight and a dragon. The creation, which beat out the work of 15 other teams, claimed a top prize yesterday in the Multi Block Classic at the 2015 World Ice Art Championships, notably sponsored by BP. Other winners included Russians Ivan Zuev and Eduard Ponomarenko for their abstract masterpiece [need something more descriptive than just masterpiece), Ancient Protector, and Vitaly Lednev for the giant chameleon, Lizard's Treat.
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I think ice sculpting is a great art form that is not given enough recognition. Ice sculpting is very difficult because you have a limited amount of time to create it and all of the work needs to be done in very cold temperatures. Some ice sculptures have a lot of detail and are very intricate. It is a shame that a piece of art like that can disappear into a puddle when the temperature is too high. Most artists can save some of their work, but ice sculptors can only take pictures of their work to look at later. I am sure it is very difficult to work with ice because it is very fragile and with too much pressure you can break off a big chunk by accident. It can be very frustrating if you broke one thing because you cannot repair it. Ice sculpting takes a lot of precision and care.
I love the process of Ice sculpting, I love the look of a finished ice sculpture. there is so much that is clean and fresh about it. Ice sculptures are even more magical when you light it correctly. The article talks about the championships for Ice art and there are indeed a lot of beautiful works. I've seen videos of performers sculpting ice on a cruise ship. they are able to carve a block of ice down with a chisel in 10 minutes! then carve it into a swan while racing another guy. I actually didn't know until recently how they were able to make it looks so clean and smooth. they actually apply heat using a torch to melt the surface of the sculpted ice into a nice water like surface. Ice sculptors are very skilled and it requires a lot of time to learn what they are able to do in a short time.
How do they do that? The amount of texture and detail is astonishing, from the scales to the feathers, frosted and clear spaces. And the self-imposed time limit means they have to work at crazy speeds. I am completely speechless at some of these works! I can’t even get ice cubes to fully freeze! There is some incredible talent here; I would pay just to see them work. I wonder if there’s any kind of training for this medium or if these people are all just hoists. Maybe it’s a medium formal colleges should consider offering? Like any temporary material it is certainly a manner of art, and well-rounded artists should be exposed to all sorts of branches. A secondary question, where are the nationals held, how do people get into these competitions in the first place? It’s like those budding media, like food art and sculpture. I’m excited to see what else comes out of these ice crafting competitions.
Ice sculptures are literally one of my favorite things ever. The mastery in each of these sculptures of stunning. The clarity of the overall piece. The sculpting marks when the camera zoomed in. Beautiful. I have no idea how they can sculpt it all before it melts and then keep it frozen for so long. Wouldn't the room have to be super cold for the audience? Don't the lights melt the ice? How do they sculpt it with power tools of all things? It’s fascinating. Power tools are not very delicate- it must take a long time to learn how to control the tools so they make what you want them to. I wonder if they went through any training or if was just something they picked up through the years. Like, in my high school I almost was involved in snow carving one winter but the weather was too warm for snow. I wonder if these people started like that.
These ice sculptures are so amazing. I would love to experience these competition events. Ice sculptures are such an eye catching art. They take a lot of time to be precise and then they are lit with beautiful colors. And what's so amazing about these are the huge amount of detail that is seen, while they may melt because of the weather. I just love these clear creations. There's actually an ice exhibit in Florida that happens every December. It's a great experience. They change the theme every year, but they always include this interactive slide room. It blows my mid that people are able to actually carve these creatures from ice. I wish I could be able to do something as amazing as that. But admiring it means a lot to me too. I think one of my favorite sculptures I've ever seen in that exhibit was the manger scene with the birth of baby Jesus. It was just so touching. My favorite sculpture from these photos though is definitely the "fighter" sculpture.
Ice sculptures are such a charming form of entertainment and art. I remember as a kid going into Copley Square in Boston and seeing all of the New Year’s ice sculptures all around. Designing the light for these massive pieces is such a challenge because unfortunately, unlike in Alaska, Boston does not have special lakes to get full blocks of ice, so the artists use several blocks atop one another and do there best to detail around the seams and the lighting people try not to highlight the horizontal lines. By drawing the eye to more intricate or bigger, showier pieces, the seams won’t be caught by many people. But in the article it says Alaska has a super special lake from which they harvest ginormous ice blocks just for these sculptures, which is so cool and probably on a much larger scale. The elegance in these pieces bring such joy and whimsy to the cold, winter environment.
These sculptures, to some degree, remind me of Susan Tsu's clear box assignment. I've always seen something very clean, fresh and eye catching about sculptures that are completely clear. It seems to feel like it shouldn't exist but it does, which gives it this etherial feeling to it. It also draws a lot of focus towards the lighting. For example, when I was trying to take a picture of my clear box under regular light, my camera had a lot of trouble picking up the box. Because of the abundance of ambient light, my box seemed to disappear into my desk. In contrast to that, when I purposefully lit my box to take the photos, it was completely visible and looked amazing. Ice sculptures are the same. So if you were so see some of these designs in regular day light, they'd begin to disappear, the detail wouldn't show as much. But the second lighting designers get a hold of it. These spectacular creations appear!
I am always amazed by the talent of some people, I like to think that I have pretty good spatial reasoning, but being able to see a form like these things inside a single block of material is beyond me. I find it really amazing and wonderful to see these things. Part of the interest in ice sculptures comes from that they are so temporary and fragile, one often expects a sculpture to be from bronze or stone, and something that is permanent, with ice, it has to be a once and then done thing. The part that interests me more is the color of the material. 1) It is really remarkable how clear and pure some of that ice is. I looked at the images of them collecting the ice from the pond, and saying how the first batch wasn’t clear enough, so they would have to wait for another couple weeks. 2) The color of the various textures of the finished sculptures is really wonderful to look at and see how it changes with movement.
Ice sculptures are extremely cool! Yes that was a pun. I think that the talent which goes into sculpting ice is absolutely incredible not only because of the material but also the detail that goes into them. I’m sure that doing such a sculpture requires either very cold temperatures, or incredible speed. It’s also one of those materials that if a mistake is made, it cannot be undone. I’m sure plenty of people have to completely start over their sculptures many times when they begin learning. What’s great about marble is that when a chunk is chipped off that was accidental it can be glued back on because of the opacity of the material. That is not possible with ice because it is translucent and glue does not stick to ice. I applaud every ice sculptor in the world for being able to sculpt in such cold temperatures and having such incredible skills.
Ice sculpting is unreal; I will probably never understand how they are able to texture ice to make it look like fur or scales. The detail is so minuscule, and the surface so brittle and cold, ugh! But you have to admire the artists who create these sculptures only to have them melt before their eyes in a few days time. It must be cathartic to work so hard on something and then watch it so easily fade away. I suppose that's what we do as theatre technicians too. The amount of work we put in at strike pales in comparison to the volume of work we shoulder during pre-production and build. The impermanence of art isn't something many people understand, because we always feel the need to preserve something if it's really good. I just thank technology for being able to save and repeat a few of my favorite theatre shows, though I know it's never as good on a computer screen as it is live.
This is really, incredibly, fantastically, COOL! I would love to see how they do it. That they can make ice so thin, textural, and yet still hold itself up in a sheet like that (especially if it’s made from multiple blocks!) is really incredible. The video at the end had a few photos, that I think were especially interesting because of the way the artists gave the ice texture; no skin was perfectly smooth, or if it was it had a frosted quality. The amount of detail that must go into work like this is amazing. Also, how do they do it without the ice melting, or their hands freezing and being unable to work to the same kind of detail they were trying to achieve? It is, overall, astounding. It reminds me of the Sapporo snow festival in Japan, where artists come to carve out of snow, rather than ice.
These ice sculptures are absolutely amazing. The amount of detail carved into such a dense medium is astounding. I’d love to attempt ice sculpture or large scale sculpture like it at some point in my life but I’d be terrified the entire time that I’d hit the chisel to hard and hack off a limb of whatever form I’m creating. In this way I think ice sculpture is truly amazing: the artist has to be strong handed enough to dig into a huge block of ice cutting off significant slabs of ice, and yet soft and skilled enough to incorporate small details into the shape without destroying it as it narrows down into a much more fragile structure. In the video the sculpture that captivated me the most was the bird sitting so poise on a tree. The skill and precision that must have gone into that was surely incredible. In many ways I think of large-scale sculpture as the reverse of conventional art. Instead of starting with a blank canvas and adding to it you start with everything there and actively take away to create the masterpiece. I’m sure these artists must be masters of envisioning their work as it forms.
Ice. What the north gets plenty of during winter, and what the south uses to keep their drinks cold during the summer. The only time I’ve really seen ice sculptures have been at weddings from time to time, and those are your typical swan or dolphin, nothing too out of the ordinary. If there is any place to have an ice art championship, Alaska seems like the place to do it. The artistic skill it takes to create the types of pieces they do, is much more difficult than I believe it to be. Ice is fairly delicate, but I’m sure it’s not your typical ice that you make in your freezer. One chink in the ice could be disastrous for the whole sculpture. I wonder if they had a plan of attack going into this, and have constructed something like this before, because I would think that going at it blind without a plan, or coming up with one is tough. It’s hard to compare that process with a show like a Top Chef competition, because they’ve got plenty of resources to choose from. I don’t know how many strikes they are allowed to make before it just goes down the drain, but these are professionals we are talking about.
I feel like our generation of artists has become obsessed with the notion of legacy, and creating the ambiguous "something that lasts". And it is sometimes comforting to think that I too could create something from and of me that endured well after I was gone. But there is something daring in consciously using a medium that is so transient. Why invest so much time and effort in learning a skill, and an art form that won't last? The pursuit for lasting impact is ubiquitous and never ceasing, which makes me glad that things like this are celebrated.
Ice has an undeniable, specific, and inimitable beauty. There is no substitute. And so I firmly believe that ice carving is so worthwhile, because even though it is not the lasting or easiest choice, it is a bold one. And indeed, we may collectively remember these pieces well after the last marble statue has crumbled.
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