Dawson List
22 Years Experience
New Orleans, LA
Male, 52
For more than 2 decades, I've been an ice sculptor, mostly for events in and around New Orleans. This means that if it can be made of ice and it's fun, I've probably made it for some crazy all-out party. I am a gold medal ice carver and my teammates and I also have a Guinness World Record for the world's longest ice bar. In 2004, I was ohh, so close to winning a world championship in Alaska. Alas, we came in second...maybe next time. But want to know something about ice sculptures? Ask me!
Thank you Michelle; glad you like it! I have written ebooks about ice sculpting, but they're more along the technical, how-to line than ice sculpting as an experience and an art. But maybe someday...
As for your question, oddly there's a fairly simple answer: $5000. That's apparently the accepted big prize amount for a high profile ice sculpting competition. Now I'm not saying that it can't or won't be more or less, but over the last decade or so, that seems to be the number, most of the time, for the "big" events.
But one really BIG event isn't part of this equation and that's been a problem for some carvers. Until recently, the prize money at the World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks has been surprisingly low, with some high placing sculptors walking away with awards in the hundreds for an event that's extreme in many ways: extremely cold, extremely difficult, and you get extremely tired carving so much ice over a long period. After an outcry amongst top carvers though, the prize money has gone up some, with assurances that it will keep going up.
As you can see though, even the best competition ice sculptors won't be giving Tiger Woods or other professional competitor-types a run for their money. I suppose it's possible to live off ice sculpting winnings, but only during the winter and only in areas where you could get to a lot of competitions without traveling a lot. (Most typical ice sculpting events feature a top prize of about $1000.) And you'd have to win a lot too. It would still be a lot of cheap meals and cheap hotels.
The other day, I was on a conference call with a team that I'm a member of and we were talking about our plans for a competition. I think one member said something about taking a certain approach so that we'd have the best chance to win or place in the competition. After many years of carving, however, I've come to the conclusion that it's not about you against the other sculptors. It's about you and the ice before you. You get x amount of time and you try to create the best piece of ice art that you can manage. (Hopefully, you've taken the time to prepare.) Anything else is an unnecessary distraction and the competition results are what they are. Just make sure that you're happy with what you've made and that you get some good photos, because it won't be around for very long!
Thanks for your question Michelle!
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The timing of your question is very good; I was working on a blog entry earlier where I touched on a very similar question. I'd have to say that it's tough to get excited to carve things that you've carved over and over again. Especially if they want it "just the way you carved it last time." Sculptures that fit in this category for me include fleur-de-lis's (very popular in New Orleans), hearts with doves, and hearts with swans. All of these are very popular for weddings in my area. While I appreciate that the ice sculpture is important to them since it's a very big day for them, sometimes I wish for a little more creativity. But hey, nobody's forcing me to do this job, and I do get to decide which jobs I take and which ones I don't. So if I'm bored by certain types of sculptures, I have only myself to blame.
If I stopped sculpting tomorrow… I'm not sure what I would do. I know that someday I will stop sculpting ice, but I don't know when that'll be. I think I’d kind of assumed that it would be shortly before I die, whenever that is. I suppose it's possible that I’d suffer some sort of disability and not be able to carve; that's not a fun prospect. I have considered the possibility that I'd stop sculpting ice. But along with this consideration, I'd also assumed that I would be sculpting something else. Maybe something permanent? I really enjoy sculpting so it's difficult for me to imagine life without it.
I do have degrees in biology and chemistry, so I guess that would be a possibility. But I think I'd have to go back to school for a while because I'm pretty sure there've been some significant advances in these fields since I graduated.
I suppose I'd have to modify your question a bit to give you the best answer. I do get bored by the commercial aspects of sculpting ice. Simply re-creating a logo in ice is not very stimulating from a creative point of view. As I said before, carving the same thing over and over again also isn't that much fun. So I'm trying to figure out ways to carve only the things that I want to carve. As you might imagine, this is a bit tricky, so I have a ways to go. So I think I'd say that I would give up commercial ice sculpting, but I would never give up artistically stimulating ice sculpting unless I had to.
Good question; made me think. Thank you for that.
P.S. Ooh! Here's a possibility that I just thought of. And technically, it fulfills your question’s requirements. I think I would go into 3-D computer modeling, maybe for games or something else. See, technically that's not sculpting. It's kind of virtual sculpting. So I could do that.
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Yes, I do lots of custom work. To me, custom work is often the most interesting part of the job because you're facing new challenges and it requires that you're completely engaged and not just on autopilot. But it can also be the most stressful part, because you're occasionally not sure if what you're doing is going to work.
Regarding sculpting someone's head from ice, yes I get to do that occasionally. Lots of fun and again, stressfull. I know it's going to "work" in this case, in that it won't fall down or something. But creating a likeness is tricky and the goal is recognition: Will people immediately recognize who I've sculpted? And the worst part of this is that it melts, so even if I absolutely nailed a sculpted likeness, it's not going to stay that way for long. That's why I usually suggest an "ice portrait" in these instances. A portrait is an engraving in the ice, usually with white snow against clear ice for contrast. (examples: ice portrait gallery) It's much more straightforward to create a portrait rather than a sculpted likeness from just a photo too; less guessing required.
For pricing a likeness in ice, it kind of depends on the client's needs and the expected end result. If I were to sculpt a child in ice for a birthday party, that might cost quite a bit less than one for a celebrity at a big event. Why? The expectations would probably be much higher for the celebrity likeness, which means a lot more work (and stress) is required to get the expected end result. Meanwhile, the child's birthday party probably has a much smaller budget and I'm simply trying to create a very special decoration and some memories for the party goers; an exact likeness usually isn't required. (Please don't ask what happens if it's a sculpture for a celebrity child's birthday party!) All that said, I'd be very surprised if a custom likeness or a portrait in ice was priced at less than $500. If I were asked to create a sculpted likeness and the expectations are reasonably high, I'd probably charge significantly more than that because I'd want to spend enough time on it to get it right.
Thanks for your questions and your fantastic timing, as I'd just been checking out the Jobstr site!
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Ok, here are your answers: yes, no, and then, maybe.
Kind of a crappy answer, huh? All right, I’ll continue.
Yes.
You can ship ice sculptures, but it can be a little risky. There’s sometimes little guarantee that your ice sculpture(s) will end up intact at the other end. Most of the time, it works out fine, as long as the sculptures go by cold transport. And it can also turn out well without refrigerated transport as long as the ice is packaged properly and dry ice is added to the mix. I played a role in a perfect example of this that showed up on A&E’s Shipping Wars reality show (Season 4, episode 2; Dysfunction Junction: here’s a short clip). Last year, we shipped an ice bar and a lot of smaller sculptures from the Tampa area to a freezer in Mississippi, where I received the ice. The ice shipped in the summer, without refrigerated transport. The shipping went well and appearing on Shipping Wars was fun, but I later ended up losing a lot of the smaller ice when my freezer went down while I was out of town. Much worse than that, earlier this year, Roy Garber, the shipper on the episode, unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and died. I didn’t get to know him very well, but he was a pleasure to work with, despite his prickly reputation on the show.
I’ve also been involved in a project where we shipped a HUGE ice sculpture. Johnny Appleseed Hard Apple Cider contracted Ice Pro in Florida (the same company that sculpted the Shipping Wars ice bar above) to create the world’s largest ice luge for a party in Boston. The giant bottle-shaped ice luge was 25 feet tall and was created in Florida by Ice Pro and then shipped by cold transport in pieces to Boston where we assembled it onsite for the event. There was so much ice that we were restricted to setting it up only in a certain area by the venue’s engineer. He was concerned about the stress all the weight would put on the building, which was the Seaport World Trade Center, not exactly a small place.
There are lots of other examples of ice sculptures being shipped. A company in Canada that I know of ships sculptures all over the world. However, as you’d imagine, it’s not as easy as just calling UPS and sending it off. The sculptures have to be carefully packed and there often has to be someone on the other end with ice skills to receive the ice, store it, and then set it up. Sometimes repairs or modifications have to be made too. And then there are the unexpected problems. One shipment of ice sculptures got held up in Memphis when it didn’t clear customs as quickly as expected, which made the sculptures too late for the event.
No.
I don’t just work locally.
This summer, I went out of town for a number of ice events. I carved at a performance in Orlando, complete with face paint. Then as soon as that was over, we immediately headed to the Boston luge event that I mentioned above. Later in the summer, I went out to LA for a short carving performance at a venue by the Staples center. I was working with another sculptor and we were sculpting a large Christmas in July themed piece during a 30 minute performance. It turned out to be even a little more exciting than we expected, as BOTH of our chainsaws stopped working while we carved! But we made some on-the-fly adjustments and just found another way to get it all done.
In years past, I’ve also been contracted to create sculptures for events in Belgium, Germany, and on an island in the Caribbean. In all of these cases, the ice is already there when we arrive and a number of ice sculptors are involved. And in the Boston case, much of the carving was already done before we got there. These sorts of events can be exciting, because everything is new: new people, new places, and maybe even new electrical requirements for your tools. This requires a certain flexibility in your methods as you often have to do things differently than you’re used to. I suppose it wouldn’t be as much fun if it were easy though.
Maybe.
Even if a transported sculpture is kept below freezing, it might degrade. Transported ice sculptures degrade in three ways: melting, sublimation, and physical damage. If it’s shipped by cold transport, then you’ve got the melting part covered. The sublimation part (where the ice skips the melting part and goes straight to vapor) is not as problematic as melting. You can prevent that simply by sealing the ice in plastic so that it’s not exposed to the cold air. It’s also a pretty slow process. Finally, careful packing can prevent most physical damage. But accidents happen and not everybody takes all the necessary care in moving packed sculptures. That’s one reason to have an experienced ice sculptor on the receiving end: often you can repair damaged sculptures by carefully freezing them back together.
Thank you for your awesome question Boomer! I hope I didn’t bore you to tears with my long-winded answer, but it gave me lots to think about.
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Definitely not a dumb question! I used to wonder about doing the same thing. However, adding color to ice is trickier than you'd think. When we freeze the ultra-clear ice blocks for sculpting, the ice ends up very clear because it's very pure. There are very few impurities like air or salts in the ice blocks because the ice wants to build a pure ice crystal and there's no room for other stuff. As it turns out, it means that it's difficult to color ice blocks because dyes or food coloring get forced out as well while the clear block is freezing. So, to make a colored block, we also add milk to help keep the dye in place and then the water circulating pumps are also turned off while the block freezes. So then you end up with an ice block that looks like a giant popsicle, just without the stick.
Colored ice blocks are definitely not bad. In fact, at the Gaylord Hotel ICE! events around the country, carvers from China make amazing sculptures from colored ice. But colored ice blocks melt a little faster and they make a mess too.So for most events, you want clear ice blocks to carve. When we need to color the ice, for logos or other designs, we freeze colored sand or paint colored gelatin inside the sculptures. Or, we can use colored lights. Great question; thanks!
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Hey Cory! Yes, that has absolutely happened! Usually, it's due to some miscommunication ahead of time or a necessary delay of the event start. However, I've had situations before where the client wants the sculpture delivered by a certain time and apparently fails to realize that it's too early for an ice sculpture. I try to avoid that by talking with the client and getting all the event details, but sometimes it happens anyway. In every situation where the event is delayed and I'm worried about a sculpture lasting, I'll take SOME sort of action. It can be as simple as leaving the sculpture covered in insulation, which can make a big difference. If I can't stay to wait, then I'll simply ask someone to carefully remove the cover at a certain time. I honestly can't remember many (if any, actually) instances where it ended up being a problem in the end. If it did, I'd think it was because it was a very hot environment for a sculpture and the window where it looked good was even shorter than usual.
As for the standard length of time that a sculpture lasts, I usually say 4-6 hours. I don't mean that the sculpture will collapse at 6 hours and 1 minute, I just mean that pretty much all the detail may be gone by then. And of course, it depends on the sculpture. Some sculptures, by virtue of their design, might last much longer, even at room temperature. Ice in shapes with little relative surface area lasts much longer than designs with a lot of surface area.
My apologies for taking so long to answer your question! I took a long break from some aspects of my ice sculpting career. One minor upside of a pandemic is that I have more time to work on neglected tasks :/
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Hi Dan! Thanks for your question! I really had to think about how I'd answer it. And truthfully, there are a lot of ways to answer it. If I take the simplest approach, my least favorite thing to sculpt would probably be buildings or something similarly highly symmetrical and precise. Sculpting windows on a skyscraper is pretty much the most boring thing I can imagine in ice sculpting, at least by hand. My favorite thing to sculpt would almost certainly be figures; the human body is ridiculously challenging to sculpt since everybody can recognize when something isn't right. I'd group faces and expressions in there as well.
Taking another approach to your question, there's a single sculpture and that is both a favorite and a least favorite: "Beautiful Chemistry," an abstract DNA sculpture that David Fong and I made in Alaska in 2009. It's a favorite because it turned out pretty awesome in many ways and I got some nice pics. We won 6th place in the World Ice Art championships that year. However, it's also a least favorite because we didn't finish it, so it didn't reach its potential. Also, I was the team captain and I didn't manage our approach to the competition very well. By the end of the competition, David wasn't talking to me and due to a scheduling goof, left before the awards ceremony. An otherwise amazing experience ended very poorly. It was very humbling. Fortunately, we were able to pretty much patch things up during a trip to China years later. In hindsight, I wasn't proud of how I handled that experience in 2009, but I do take a bit of pride in realizing that I didn't stay as dumb as I was then, that I owned up to my deficiencies, and reconnected with a friend and talented colleague.
As for sculptures that I have rejected or will reject, there's a lot of potential there. Of course, I've had to reject sculptures because the budget wasn't large enough. Some people can't imagine that a sculpture made from frozen water could cost more than a couple hundred dollars. I don't think they take into account the specialized tools and the years of practice and experience. Plus the working at 19?F part. For other than monetary reasons, there was a particular sculpture that I passed on years ago. I ended up a letting an apprentice go ahead and sculpt it. It was a large, anatomically correct, male appendage. However, down the line, I went ahead and sculpted the same thing more than once. I guess I got over whatever was making me uncomfortable. One time, it was even an ice luge, lol.
Finally, there's one sculpture I've made in the past that's particularly relevant to right now: Colonel Reb, the former mascot at Ole Miss. If you've never seen him, he looks like Colonel Sanders crossed with Yosemite Sam and he's leaning on a cane. I'm going to guess that I've sculpted him six or seven times, maybe more, and I think all for weddings. I used to be proud of those sculptures, because I did a pretty good job at executing that mascot. And superficially, yeah, it's just a cartoon of an old man with a big hat and a cane. But that's not what everybody sees when they look at him. And that's not what I see anymore either. Old Miss did the right thing when they changed their mascot. Only 17 years later, I've decided not to sculpt him anymore :/ Better late than never I guess. I'll take it as a positive though that this occurred to me without anyone personally pointing it out to me.
On a lighter note, if one more jackass in an Escalade cuts me off, or one more jerk on an overly loud Harley wakes me up, then Cadillac and Harley Davidson logos are off the table. Definitely no Harley ice sculptures! Well...ok, maybe. But there's going to be a very large surcharge for me to get over the annoyance factor!
Great question! Thanks Dan!
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