The web site for the Fish Creek Winter Festival promised a load of ice sculptures, which got my heart racing a bit. Door County is an artist community and I imagined that the folks there would be pretty fair hands at turning blocks of ice into spectacular works of art. Cool.
I specifically packed a couple of strobes, gels, and stands anticipating making some nicely lit twilight photos of carved ice in all its glory.
Only reality didn't quite match up with the pictures I had in my head.
I arrived on Friday evening looking for a visual feast of icy artistry. What I got was more like a late night drive through snack. I was only able to locate three ice sculptures that evening -- a chubby boat anchor (or maybe R2D2 on the Atkins diet), an ice cream cone-looking thingy with a club stuck inside and one that my wife thought was one of those tall fountains with a big stone ball in it. I mentioned that it was probably intended to be a martini glass with an olive, since the sculpture was situated in front of a business that sold liquor.
The next morning I discovered a roughly horse-shaped chunk of ice in front of a cafe. I asked the folks standing nearby if they knew whether the artist would come by and finish the piece. I was told that the work on all sculptures was finished and that they had been done by local high school students, most of whom had never previously done any ice sculpting. You don't say ...
Anyway, I made the best of the situation, lit a couple of the sculptures, skipped the fountain/martini because it was located under a streetlight that poured green light all over everything, shot the horse and moved on to bigger and better things.
As they say, when life hands you lemons and ice, make a Slurpee.
Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.
1 comment:
Brings back memories, for me, of the ice sculptures in Sapporo.
Post a Comment