Art in ice: Old Art Building introduces artists to ice sculpting

Feb. 26—LELAND — Mike Rizik likes to go ski and fly fish.

Neither of those two things, of course, have any relationship to creating art.

But when his wife, who works at the Old Art Building, asked Rizik if he was interested in creating an ice sculpture for a community event Saturday, he jumped at the opportunity to do something fun outside.

The result: An relief sculpture of the Leelanau Peninsula and the Manitou islands in ice that came fairly close to resembling a frozen Han Solo in carbonite.

"Based on our inability, it seemed like an easy way to start," said Rizik, the 36-year-old Traverse City resident.

That, for most of the 10 artists teams at the Old Art Building, was a common theme.

The Old Art Building hosted a six-hour Icebreaker challenge with the help of former world champion sculptor Steven Berkshire of Traverse City, to both demonstrate the inner-workings of ice sculpting as an art and have a little fun in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Becky Ross, executive director of the OAB, said the idea for the event came from brainstorming sessions of how to put on an outdoor event in the cold to minimize the potential for COVID-19 to spread.

"We've got this great yard here," Ross said. "We just thought it would be something that would be fun and different to do, and the more that we've been planning it, the more people have been saying, 'You've got to do this every year, this would be awesome.' Of course. Why not?"

Ross said she could see it becoming an annual event.

Each of the team bays, which were given their own shoveled out area of snow, were spaced six feet apart from the next.

All artists interviewed Saturday said they'd be back again next year — even though it was the first time the event happened.

The ice blocks themselves were a 20-by-40 inch rectangle to weigh roughly 300 pounds.

Berkshire — who created statue of with the letters OAB — held a demonstration for the novice teams on techniques of what you could do with the ice ended up sculpting a statue of his own by the end of the day.

Using a two blocks, Berkshire carved a fish on top of a pedestal with scales that created an optical illusion with how they were drilled into the fish's skin.

"He (Berkshire) is basically our guru for the day," Ross said.

Other participants said they had a background in art, and in some cases three-dimensional art, just not ice sculpting. There was also a group of children that chose to paint the ice in lieu of carving it with tools.

Jim Carpenter, 70 of Leland, lives just across the street from the OAB and reached out to Tom McConnell, 73 and also from Leland, asking if he wanted to give the icebreaker challenge a try.

McConnell was a fine art major and created three-dimensional art before, but he said that was years ago and it never was with a block of ice.

"That's what was so attractive about this event," McConnell said. "You just kind of bring your own design, draw it on there, begin to visualize it and get creative and make mistakes, and allow it to become what it's going to become."

McConnell knew he wanted to create some sort of snow angel using the ice — but Carpenter said that description might change over the course of the project.

"It's a lot softer than I thought it would be," McConnell said of the ice. "It's a very tricky process to get it this perfect, but it works very easily with a chisel."

Traverse City residents and artists Angela Saxon, 59, and Royce Deans, 64, are friends and had collaborated on art before. When the Icebreaker challenge came up, Saxon thought it was something she really wanted to do.

"It's just interesting to step outside of something that you normally do," she said. "I think that as painters we have to be good designers, I think it kind of goes with the territory."

Royce said it was fun watching the team's sculpture emerge — a frozen flying squirrel.

"We've literally never done this before," he said as he laid down carving.

"We were asked to come up with a team name, and our team name is 'The Flying Chisels' and so we thought we needed a mascot that was equally weird," Royce said. "Beavers chiseled trees to pieces, and so we figured 'if we're the flying chisels, we should have a flying beaver.'"

Royce said if beavers create dams, the flying beaver — carved out of ice — creates "ice dams."

"It was really just trying to not take ourselves seriously," Saxon said. "This is just about having fun."

Ross said she plans to have the sculptures on display for those who couldn't make it Saturday. If it happens to snow, or even warm up, guests can see how the weather affects how the long term life of the sculptures.

"The cool thing is — and I mean 'cool' — is the ice will be on display for as long as it stays cold like this," Ross said.

Follow Andrew Rosenthal on Twitter @ByAndrewR