The massive blocks used in Fairbanks at the Ice Art Championships are natural ice, and as such, they have fractures, inclusions, and other flaws. When you carve sculptures from these blocks, you have to learn to work around these imperfections, or suffer the consequences.

    If a large amount of weight must be supported by a structure that has a fracture in it, then you often have to find a way to minimize that fracture, or take the chance that, under stress, the fracture will split and give way, damaging your sculpture, often irreparably.

    “Jonah” had a large fracture in the tail of the fish, which, of course was the support for the figure Jonah (see the photo at top and below). Instead of keeping the fracture and taking their chances, the carvers decided to cut away some of the ice containing the fracture and put a clean support piece in its place. The result was the trapezoidal piece shown in the top photo that interrupts the white vertical fracture line below it. This patch is a very good solution and obviously it worked quite well, as “Jonah” was the top sculpture in the Realistic category.

“Jonah” by Steve Brice, Jeff Stahl, Louis Manzoni, and Tom Lewando

    When I was on Junichi Nakamura’s team in 2004, we ran into a similar sort of problem while we were working on “Ancestral Spirit.” A support structure for the spear had a large fracture and we were concerned that it would give way. Instead of adding a patch, Junichi actually broke the ice at the fracture, placed the two fracture surfaces together, then simply refroze it. This could likely be a risky technique, especially if it’s not a clean break, but it worked very well, as you can see below.

“Ancestral Spirit” by Junichi Nakamura, Shinichi Sawamura, Greg Butauski, and Dawson List; from 2004