My introduction to Ice Sculpture - ice sculpture

I'm a liar. I said that my first ice sculpture was in Salekhard, Russia in 2002 but i actually got my first taste for ice in Moscow and St. Petersburg the year before. I neglected to post these sculptures till now for dramatic effect. You see, the Documentary Cool Carvings which we made about our project in Salekhard says that was our first project but only so that we could give it a more interesting story line. It's not that big a lie, I don't think I'll be going to hell for it or anything like that. Anyway, the sculptures we did the year before I look on as training, although I still should document Them. The moral of the story is don't believe everything you see on the internet.

This one was Niall Magee and my first ice sculpture. We were so excited to fly to Moscow to visit the city again and also try this new material. To be honest we really didn't have a clue what we were doing but the flights and hotel were paid, so why not.

Arriving in Moscow we were met by temperature of around +5 so there wasn't much point in starting our piece the whole project was delayed. The Clement weather lasted for a few day so we spent our time site seeing and relaxing in Moscow. Finally when the weather went below freezing we could start.

Ice and sand are like chalk and cheese. The way you work with ice is constructive and negative, you get one chance to get thing right or you need to use a new piece of ice entirely. With sand you have more possibilities to add on small amounts to fix any mistakes.

The tools we had brought with us were wood chisels and a blunt chainsaw and it was a quick learning curve to know that we were very unprepared.

Given 4 blocks of ice messuring 1m x 50cm x 25cm (which is a standard size) we had two days left of our time in Moscow to throw something together.

I had this sketch in my note book so we went for it. As you can see from my very bad photos it wasn't a great success but we did learn something.

1. Sharp tools are crucial, much sharper than you would use for wood.
2. Working with ice is cold. Our clothes we not the best especially for our hands and feet. That even though the temperature was warm enough we were still frozen.
3. I looked forward to trying it again as it is a very beautiful material and would open up lots of new possibilities for me.
4. Vodka is quite a dangerous drink when in the company of Russians.
5. Climate change is real.

After this relative failure of an event Niall and I hopped on a train to ST. Petersburg for our next mission. I'll post about that one next.

I usually try to be as accurate as possible while I am pinning my posts to @steemworldmap but with this sculpture I forget where exactly it was so I just pinned the center of Moscow. If I can find out I will edit.

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Ps

Thanks for reading. I use Steemit 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.

Fixing a Dell SK-8135 keyboard

Swimming - sand sculpture

Don Quixote/ luliang pact - sand sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon.
@ammonite