Follow the Star - ice sculpture

Showing sculpture of a Christmas theme at this time of year is probably not the most seasonal thing to do, but you will have to bear with me. I am trying to document all my sculptures in chronological order and this is the next on my list, created for an ice sculpture festival in Eindhoven, Holland all the way back in 2004.

I was teamed up again with Niall magee and asked to make this for the Christmas ice sculpture exhibition. We were to depict the three kings following the star to find the son of God, who had just been born in Bethlehem. I'm sure you heard the story. It's from a good book

While Niall set about making the three king I decided to tackle the star. Our floor space was very limited as was the ceiling height so I opted to make it as a long backdrop to the kings.

I had one block of ice around 2m by 1m by 50cm and the off cuts of snow that Niall had from the kings. It reminded me of another story in The Good Book where many years later Jesus was able to use 5 loaves and two fishes to feed a crowd of 5000 dinner guests. Well, here was I trying to create a whole backdrop with bits and bobs.

Being a clever clogs and hoping to try something different, I first wanted to make the star like a sphere of atomic rings. So I constructed a compass jig to allow me to use my die grinder ( a large Dremil tool) to cut large rings into the side of the larger block of ice to as deep as my cutting bit would go. I them enlisted the help of Kimmo Frosty (a Finish ice sculptor that was much more experienced than I at using the 1 meter chain saw) to cut these ring free from the block.
Leaving the largest one on a base Niall and I then proceeded to fuse back in the smaller rings at different angles to give it a more globe like look. In the middle I made a ball of ice which was to be connected with an optic fiber I ran up through the tail This whole process is hard to express in words but the above image was the result.

The tail was made from the rest of the ice. It was a large feather like structure and running through its spine I ran the optic fiber to bring light up to the center of the star. You can see this in some of the images. Unfortunately I never got to see the light connected as I had to leave the project early with Niall finishing off.

Unfortunately the star didn't last too long and never got it's light like I wanted. Someone hit against it and the whole thing smashed into a million pieces.
The above image it what another sculptor did to try and salvage the piece.
With Ice you have to except these situations. Try your best but it is usually up to someone else, once you leave to do the finishing touches to your work. You can't be too precious about your work.
I really enjoy coming up with new ways of doing things and I really liked how delicate the whole thing looked. Maybe, in hind-sight a bit too delicate.

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Ps

Thanks for reading. I use Steem to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, among other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Steem blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.

Two rooms with a view- ice sculpture

Zhoushan 2004 - sand sculpture

Temporal nostalgia - sand sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon
@ammonite