Snow Sculpture from the Vermont State Snow Sculpting Champions

exhausted! Up all night! And all done!

Here it is! Worked on it all day long, cept for the hot tub time!

chilis!! this is where it starts! ohare and inspiratios.

My Iphone WordPress plugin doesnt seem to work, so here is the recap. It’s too warm but the temps should be dropping tonight for the rest of the week. We are working hard and we are on schedule to be roughed out tonight so Friday and Saturday is all detail. The pics here don’t show much. Our sculpture will pop most likely tomorrow at noon or so – in – hopefully – the snow.

And all our luggage too! Now a burger while we wait for Dave.

We leave for Breckenridge on Sunday, and have a day and a half to kick it, get the model and the associated tools ready, and get acclimated to the altitude. But a week from today we will be out there facing a 10 foot by 10 foot, 12 foot high, 20 ton block of snow.

Its a big block. I remember the first time we tackled the 6X6 foot block here in Burlington and I thought is was pretty huge… the one out there is almost 4 times the mass. It is a daunting feeling knowing that you have to transform it into a beautiful work of art on par with some of the best sculptors of the world in five days. Add to that the fact that we will be hungover, ill-slept, and getting used to how we all work together as a team, and you have the makings for complete chaos.

Usually we get through it pretty easily though. At some point we take a break and get an early beer – that usually helps – and then we go on and tackle that block some more.

I actually have a fairly good idea of how to de-bulk the block to make the snow sculpture this year. I have gone through the process of making a secondary model, a de-bulking snow sculpture model, and will use that to get to the point of being able to start carving more intricate shapes then just blocks – which is what it will look like for the first two days.

We will be uploading camera phone pics and blogging as time allows, so stay tuned!

We’ve been making something for First Night for a couple of years now. They had us at the top block of Church Street for the first couple of years, then Jimmy – the guy who ran First Night – wanted to try and pump up the after-Dragon-Parade-party in City Hall Park – so we were in City Hall Park for a while – and Jimmy wanted us to light the sculptures on fire – so that was cool. But it was good to be back on the top block next to the big Christmas tree this year.

Also- the new woman of First Night – Jenn – told us there was a theme this year. We are celebrating the quadracentennial of Samuel De Champlain’s discovery of Lake Champlain all this year. So the sculpture kind of took shape all on its own. Champ – the Lake Monster – easily recognizable – and Samuel D – who kind of looks like Shakespeare.

It snowed about two weeks ago. We got a foot or more – then we had a serious warm spell and a couple of rains, so all the snow disappeared. I wasn’t even sure the guys at Parks and Rec could find enough snow to fill the 6 foot by 6 foot box – but Richie called me on Sunday and said they had a couple piles stashed around town. His quote “I don’t know how clean the snow will be…”. So needless to say it was pretty rocky and leafy… and very very heavy. Wet. The wetter the snow the closer it is to ice, and of course the day after they built the snow block the temps took a nose dive into artic land… but oh well… you have to take what you get in this biz…

This I can tell you – if we had great snow and were able to sculpt and perfect representation of Samuel De Champlain, there would still be a lot of people in Burlington Vermont who would have no idea who Samuel De Champlain is. He just doesn’t hit the same marks in cultural iconography of say… Einstein… or Brittany Spears even… (not that would be a sculpture – Brittany and Einstein….)

It was Dosties first time at snow sculpting – heavy wet rocky snow and the temparatures dropping and the wind whipping around the top block of Church Street… I think he got the gist of it. Snow Sculpting isn’t really glamorous… but it still is the only medium I know where you can bust out an eight foot tall sculpture with a couple of people in just two short days of work….

The 400 yrs was Brookes idea – to represent the quadracentennial. I never like making numbers of letters, but I do think it helped explain itspef to the public.

It was still there and in pretty good shape today – I wonder how long it will last?

The last couple of days the snow has been flying here in Vermont – its dastardly cold – but the only thing that is keeping me from making a giant thing in my yard, is time… the odd thing is… I don’t have time to snow sculpt right now because I am very busy trying to get ready for the snow sculpting I am doing on New Year’s Eve, and in the weeks that follow. It’s this darn job I have, and all the subsequent freelance work I take on to try and make enough money to save. Ah well… for now I have been just snow sculpting in my mind as I have been shoveling and moving snow from one place to another. 

Our driveway is very narrow. And steep. So there is little room to the sides to pile the snow. I have this awesome snow management tool – a big scoop shovel sleigh thing – so I really move a lot of snow when it snows – and it snowed a couple of times in a row, so I had to think about where the next snow would go. And the dog has to go in the backyard too, so there has to be paths through the snow back there too – because the dog doesn’t like tramping through the snow when its over her head – and hey… who can blame her for that. 

I met with Pat Rideout from Church Street today to try and figure out where to put the First Night sculpture. He wants it in the garden next to City Hall – which would be pretty darn awesome. But I am not sure if the fine folks at Parks and Rec could pull that off. I have seen how they fill that thing and I am not sure if their back-ho deal can reach that far… but we’ll see I suppose. 

I do know it was the first solid plans I made this season. Out in the weather. Looking at a site. It made me excited… if I can only get some time to practice now… I could get this snow sculpting out of my mind and out in the real world where it belongs.