Snow Sculpture from the Vermont State Snow Sculpting Champions

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!

So – Here is the latest greatest version. With less then two weeks before be head out to Colorado to make it. I think it is showing signs of being awesome – and seeing it in this small form we are better able to imagine how to create it from the 20 ton block of snow that we will be faced with.

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?

Model. Getting there.

Originally uploaded by Vermont Snow Sculpture Pic Account

Here is the model as of today. Still needs a bit of toning – but the gist os all there.

Stage 1

Originally uploaded by Vermont Snow Sculpture Pic Account

Front yard sculpture

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.

I am testing out the Flickr upload your camera phone to blog automatically feature. This is our dog model Trinket out in the snow of the dog park. She matches the outside well in early winter. Being that I am uploading it to Flickr – then it comes here to my blog – it should be auto-posted on my Facebook page through the Wordbook plugin. Last year for Colorado I customized a mobile blogging tool called CoMoBlog to use, and I am hoping not to have to do that again. I might have to start a new Flickr account though – I think I might be running out of space – but I am stoked that it works. That CoMoBlog took a bit more doing and didn’t work quite as well – so hat’s off to the teams at Flickr and Facebook and WordPress and the phone camera people and most of all Trinket, for looking real cute out in the snow.

Trinket in the snow

Originally uploaded by michaeljnedell

In the course of making our model we spend a lot of time sitting around talking about the techniques we have used in the past – which are mostly cases of trial and error. Every once in a while we learn something, and the cumulation of all this has got us to where we are now. 

Last time we were all together we decided on making another model – but this one will be a mid-stage model. Most of the bulk removed and the basic shapes coming out – no detail – just shapes. We think this might help in a few regards – it will give us an intermediary goal, which should boost our spirits when we reach it. (Sculpting for five days with one end goal can kind of get to us). 

But mostly it will afford us the opportunity to go for it in that first stage of the game – the major debulking stage. We won’t have to figure out where we need to chop away to before we have to ‘get serious’. Usually I end up worrying we are cutting in too much – which is the whole thing about sculpting that can make your mind go all thinky on you. So this should – in theory – help. 

It does mean we have to carry two models out there – and make two of our plexiglass gridded boxes – but this could be the right path for us, as we struggle with a lack of any real ‘technique’ and develop our own unusual brand of making giant snow sculptures.

Kombi Sports sent the gear for this year’s team to me on Friday, and I must admit a certain early Christmas-like glee in opening the box and checking everything out. There is again, a serious amount of gear in the box and it really does wonders for my spirits. For the past 7 years (about) they have helped gear our team – and I can honestly not having to think about freezing during the sculpting marathon has helped us reach whatever peaks we’ve reached. I don’t know if any others reading this have ever spent five or nine hours kneeling in a cramped spot in the snow trying to make the leg look like a leg – but technical underlayers and a super-duper pair of gloves makes it all possible.

I do remember what inspired me to call them too – it was the year it was 30 below every day we were sculpting. It was like sculpting a six foot thick chunck of ice – hardly anyone came to see it and three sculpting teams did not finish their pieces – something I have never even heard of before. Well – we managed to finish and we managed to win – but I didn’t feel warm for about a week. The gloves I had were trashed so I went looking for new ones and I was talking to the person at the store and they mentioned Kombo being HQ’ed in Essex Junction – so I wrote them and they sent us some gear the following year and we sent them some pics – and the rest, as they say, is history.

And then there is Gmail… now don’t get me wrong, I like it well enough – but the code to generate new Gmail addresses was cracked a few months ago and I don’t think it has been fixed yet – the amount of spam I was getting from gmail addresses was off the hook in the past month – I had to insert a Captcha on my comment forms. Luckily in WordPress it takes about 3 minutes. I didn’t even have to look at any code!