Every year I look forward to Ice Alaska's world championships of ice sculpture. Artists from all over the world compete to make the most complicated, beautiful and amazing things from huge blocks of ice. Please do click on the images to see them larger. I didn't want to post them all in a large format that would take too long to load.
Most of the photos here were taken at the single block competition. Toward the end I got some shots of the artists working like crazy to finish their giant multi-block sculptures. Below you see unfinished works.
These are all in various stages of work, as you can see. And they were only lighted enough for the artists to continue their sculpting.
During the day these artworks have their own beauty given by the sun, sky, snow, and spruce that surround them. At night they glow with colored lights. It's a challenge to get the exposure right, not to mention that I was using an iphone, which takes one ungloved hand. Luckily it didn't drop to the -20 or -30 that was expected, at least not while I was there.
I wore my bunny boots and was glad I had.
I always buy a season pass because the ice art changes every day. Not all the sculptures are done all at once. The small ones are finished first and the large ones last. It's impossible to see it all at once. Besides, sometimes they melt rather interestingly. Also, I want to go down the ice slides and I don't always have time to do that the first time around!
