Later this month, we’ll go back to Fairbanks for the World Ice Art Championships. Last year we did the multi-block as a four man team, but this time we’ll try the single block, which is a two man event. My teammate is David Fong, of Ice Illusions in San Francisco. He was part of the team from last year and proved to be an excellent artist and a very good ice carver with lots of energy and a positive attitude.

    Our piece is titled “beautiful chemistry” and is sort of an abstract DNA molecule concept that I came up with. The concept has some interesting angles which I’ll probably come back to another time. The finished piece should end up being 10-11 feet high and hopefully will take less than three days to carve. The rough, initial sketch is shown above, but we’re working on refining the concept and the design may look different by the time we get up there.

    Neither David nor I have tried the single block event before, so this should be interesting. However, I’ve carved similar sized pieces on my own with even less time in the past, so I think we’ll be able to finish the sculpture. The always unpredictable Fairbanks weather could have something to say about that though, so we’ll have to see how it goes.

    The event starts on February 24th, Mardi Gras day, so I’ll be sure to bring a taste of New Orleans to Alaska again!