The contestants in Ottawa’s Winterlude two-hour ice sculpture competition were arrayed around what in warmer times must be a bubbling-spraying fountain. There was ice on the sidewalks, snow on the lawn and white flakes falling from the sky.
When we arrived, the artists the carving had begun. Hints of shape were beginning to emerge.
There were hand saws and chisels. There were Dremel tools with typical attachments and long, dangerous-looking attachments which you’d undoubtedly want to keep away from your kids. There were electric irons heating up rectangular plates of aluminum. And of course, there were chain saws.
The artists and their tools were kicking up clouds of powdery ice. It covered their snow pants. It covered their coats. It covered their hats. It caked to their eyebrows and mustaches.
Although each of them was working on his own, evidently the rules allowed some help from time to time. When they needed to mount portions of their work to the large ice pedestals, they would call to the judges who would come and help. Sometimes this involved pushing a hot aluminum plate against some part of the sculpture to make it smooth and flat. Sometimes this involved lifting a piece into the air. Sometimes this involved squirting water or pushing slushy snow at the artist’s direction into some crucial attachment point. When ice met ice, the surfaces would freeze, the wet interfaces instantly flashing to cloudy white as the ice bond hardened
The artists could also call for the blowtorch when they were almost finished.
“Stand back!” the judges would shout fired it up.
It blew an orange flame that they briefly passed over the surface of the sculptures. Smokey white melted into a translucent shine. Water dripped from edges and tips. Sharp corners softened. Clear, living shapes jumped from the chalky prototypes of just a few moments before.
The clock ticked down.
Some of the artists were calling for the torch. Others were frantically trying to finish.
The guy with the wide-winged goose never got beyond the general form of his bird. The guy with the butterfly had spent most of his time on the body and never got to the wings. The guy with the kneeling Inuit-pixie wasn’t able to get its wings to attach. And one of the guys who was sculpting an owl had a disaster, his owl falling to the ground and shattering into pieces at the very end.
Mind you these were amazing sculptures, all of them. But of course the most amazing ones where those that got finished.
There was a snow goose flying against a rising sun. There was a wolf howling at a crescent moon. There was a many-tentacled octopus twisting into the air.
And there were two snowy owls with outstretched wings, one flying over the other, fastened only at a single balancing point.
Time ran out. The judges called on the contestants to stop. The artists brushed the remaining ice dust from their creations, wiped the sweat from their faces, stepped back to look at their work, and turned to pack their tools.