Snow Sculpture from the Vermont State Snow Sculpting Champions

Hanging in the condo getting the model tight and prepping tools. Trying to make some time for a swim. Gonna meet the other teams at the Gold Duster tonight at 8 for an unofficial howdy do!

Woke up feeling great – gonna go to the Blue Moose for breakfast!

Today is turning out to be a great travel day! We had a little bit of a day leaving the bitter cold of Burlington, but we met Leslie in Chicago right on schedule and are right now winging our way to Denver. The car service in Denver already called me because our flight number was incorrect but now that is all straightened out.
As we were headed to the gate in Burlington I saw the TSA going through our bag full of chisels and knives and scrapers. Hopefully they all made it through. Taking tools on planes is weird. Not to mention the clay model. I put big signs in the luggage this year saying “VT state snow sculpting team. caution. Sharp tools” and maybe that helped with the clarity. We’ll see!!

We are at the airport. Everyone is having a great time.

Here we go. Two kids playing Marco Polo.

Ok – it’s Halloween and that means we have almost firmed up all our plans for 2011 – Halloween might mean something else for you all.

One thing is this – we need some money. It has become known to us over the years that our tools suck. The best tools we have are one I have “borrowed” from other teams. I have known this for a while, and just tried to get by with what we have, but it really doesn’t seem to be the best interest of making the best sculptures. We really do struggle with the bad tools every year – the thing is that framing chisels and the other chisels everyone else has are seriously expensive. We usually just get by – everyone on the team being artists and usually I spend a lot that I don’t have… well – you get the idea. We want to buy some new tools. We need money for airfare. We have some serious expenditures – grid boxes – clay – lumber for the frames – my snowboard bag ripped because I carry saws in it so I need to buy a new one to carry the saws I guess… and did you know they charge for luggage? We have a good 150 lbs of tools….

Alex got us some sort of 501(c)3 umbrella through his arts organization, so we sent some letters out – Kombi has always been great about sending us gear, and now Switchback Brewing gave us some funding… but we still need some more.

So I made this donate button on paypal – Maybe you can help? I will send you something!

Thanks -

Michael

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.

Monkey versus Robot

Well. We got together Saturday night and hashed it out. Honestly, I think I was feeling pretty nervous (or what passes as nervous for me). We had never really not reached a consensus this late into the process – but there we were – sitting around a table with a bunch of clay and sketchbooks (and a few brewskies) with no real clear idea. There were a few on the table and there were debates as to the merits and non-merits of one, then the other. Then all the other ideas fell away as this new idea came into play.

Monkey versus Robot. As many of you know it’s a song and an album from Burlington’s own super musical star James Kolchaka Superstar. In it he sings about the age old battle of our animal natures versus technology. We’ve listened to Monkey versus Robot and Hockey Monkey many many times when sculpting, so its sort of weird that we didn’t come up with the idea of sculpting something in that vein before.

In doing a little research there are many artists who touch upon these two icons to symbolize the tensions and torsions of our human natures in opposition to the technological advances of the modern age. Adrian had even said earlier, before we sat down to discuss the sculpture, that this was the theme of the Fantastic Mister Fox, a movie they had seen earlier that day. There is even an Iphone app! I do not know how my animal nature knows how to even deal with an Iphone app that pits technology versus animal nature!

So the sculpture now shows the robot with his ray-gun hand and the monkey with his banana-ray-gun. We will attempt to build the rays between them and the blast – where the two rays meet. At least that is the intention. So far the concepts that we have will not be possible at all if the weather is less then 75% perfect and I might even be lenient on that. There is also a bit of a snow moving job that goes along with this, utilizing the full scope of the 12 foot radius we are allowed to build out of the 8 foot diameter cylinder we get.

I’ve been pretty stoked to go and execute before, but I got to say I feel really excited about this one. Sarah got me a monkey belt buckle for Christmas and I see it as sort of a sign that the timing is right.