Daily News-Miner / March 10, 1999 / Front page

Carvers immerse themselves in their art

By Sean Cockerham

   After his first experience sculpting in the World Ice Art Championships, the frozen medium so permeated Roger Wing’s mind that even the balmy Caribbean evoked images of ice.

   “I was snorkeling in Jamaica after the 1997 competition and everything still looked like ice,” Wing recalled.  “I was floating over a coral reef, and saying this would be great to sculpt.”

   Back in Fairbanks this year as leader of a sculpting team, Wing is now engaged in transforming several shapeless ice blocks into an abstract tropical wonderland.

   Wing and Paula Payne, both from Missoula, Mont., arrived in Fairbanks two people short of a standard multi-block team.  But they met a couple of Czech ice artists at registration.

   “We wanted to have a team named Czech’s Party Mix so we figured we’d take them on,” Wing said.

  Like the other multi-block teams, the Czech-Montana hybrid was still pretty relaxed Tuesday, it being only the second day of competition.  The pressure will mount, though, as all multi-block sculptures must be completed by 9 p.m. Saturday.

   In addition to seeing the early stages of the multi-block master works, midweek visitors to the Ice Park off Phillips Field Road can enjoy the completed single-block sculptures.  The Ice Park is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., until the sculptures melt.

   “Cossack Dance,” the winner of the single-block abstract division, combines imaginative human images with intricate Russian Orthodox detailing.  It is the creation of defending champions Vladimir Zhikhartsev and Nadezhda Fedotova, two Russians who now live in Fairbanks.

   “Cossack Dance,” fronts Phillips Field Road, standing next to the winning sculpture in the realistic division of the single-block competition, “No Quarter”.

   Fairbanks master-carver Steve Brice, who also won the division last year, and Peter Slavin of New York created the Nordic warrior on a rearing horse.  The warrior’s finely crafted ice weapons look sharp enough to cut, and his visage is impressively pitiless.

   Brice is now at work on something more whimsical for the multi-block competition – yet another title he is defending.

   “For the last three years I’ve been trying to win every darn year,” Brice said.  “This is going to be a fun one.”

The sculpture will feature such elements as a mouse and a frog engaged in a chess match, and a mouse playing a violin on a piece of cheese.

   The work of Brice and other Fairbanks artists is viewed with great respect and admiration by other ice sculptors, like the Scandinavian “Blue Ice Team,” which represents a Finnish ice carving school.

   Another Fairbanks sculptor and a member of Brice’s multi-block team, Steve Lester, has taught at the school.  The Blue Ice Team members said viewing so many top artists at work in the 1999 world championships is an outstanding learning experience.

   Like many ice sculptors, the Scandinavians are longtime wood carvers.  Ice is more forgiving than wood, Swede Henry Huuva said.  But the creations are so much more ephemeral.

   “Ice carving is like music – you make it and it disappears.”