Snow Sculpture from the Vermont State Snow Sculpting Champions

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!

I got one of the many email communications today about the upcoming event in Colorado – plane itinararies and hotels and so forth – fun stuff. Vanessa, the wonder-organizer said it is supposed to snow 8 inches out there tonight! Exciting stuff – it was 50 or so in Burlington today… Here is the model – there still needs to be some shaping up – but the general gist I would say is as solid as its going to be. The guys briefcase fell down before I tool the pic and with the light it sure is hard to see what is going on with the doggie – but I am a pretty happy oily-handed camper right about now. Something in my mind clicked when I was looking at it and I started seeing the possibilities instead of the impossibilites – which is always a good sign…

We sat around the table and worked on the model and pretty much nailed it last night. I took a pic, but my phone seems to have lost it, but I need to get a better camera working on that anyway. We fit the whole thing – for the most part – inside the block, so while there will be little reconstruction of outside the block snow elements, there is still now the matter of dealing with the more then 1/3 of the sculpture that we need to demolish before we even start making something.

It is a lot of snow to move – many of the pros design to use as much as the block as possible – but we are not pros. 

We listen to some pretty spacey music when we make models, which reflects in the title of the post. Hearts of Space is a great NPR show – but after talking about it and thinking about the model I started thinking of how much of sculpture is really just space – and the hearts of the space is what makes the heart of the matter strong. 

I got the video camera. I got the 54″ floor scrapes. We think we have some good raffle prizes coming – stay tuned.

So – we were working on the model last night and we thought that after we made the cupula bigger we would be all set – but once we did that the man and the garbage can still looked to big – so now we have to redo them as well. And – as much as I said cutting snow off the block and building up whatever we needed to build up – it would be a lot easier if we didn’t have to deal with that, and just smash apart whatever we need to initially take off the snow sculpture block, instead of taking it off in an organized manner. So we need to scale everything down a little bit. I was hoping to have the model done to show everyone – PLUS I really want get the model done as soon as we can because I am doing some work for a company that makes 3D scanners – so if I can get it done and bring it with me when I have a meeting in there the woman said I can scan it – these things are like 30 grand – so this would be the one time I would be able to get close enough… what I thought I could do – once it is scanned – was to get it 3D printed! that way it could be any scale we want it to be!

There will be no coin drop in the city of Burlington for us. I tried my best – talked to the police chief – talked to the city counsel – it seems like it would be easier to add a cupola onto city hall and fill it screeching monkeys then to get permission to do a coin drop.