Some versions of this blog are headed with one of my snow sculptures – a guy on a chaise longue with a beer. Today I went to see how the pros do it. But we’ll start with my first-ever sculpture in 1987.
I was visiting back home from California and it started snowing. The friends I was staying with (my old housemates) were out and I sculpted this little guy on their front steps. They took a picture with their daughter when they got home.

I once sculpted a bike for a contest. Bicycling magazine wanted a picture to know why you needed a new bike. I said I was worried that mine would melt. I didn’t win.

Beach scenes became a favorite, since snow looks like sand if you use your imagination.

I’ve been wanting to do one of a family playing on the beach with the kids making sand castles, but I no longer have any of my kids’ old swimsuits to dress them in. Since I only think of it in the winter, I can’t get to a thrift store to buy them, since they’re not stocked.


I’ve tried a few gargoyles and lions on the newel posts, but I like this guy better.
Now let’s see how the pros do it.

















For fine detail, it helps to start with a compressed block of snow. I start from nothing and build up. The pros start from a block and carve.
While digging through an old hard drive to find a couple of pictures, I came across this poem. I don’t know when I wrote it, because I just fixed a typo so it shows today’s date. Since it rose to 9 degrees (-13 C) today, it seemed like a fitting time to stick it in here.
You call this cold?
You must be new here.
Shit, it aināt been cold hereĀ
in twenty, thirty years.
It stopped beinā cold ābout the time
they invented wind chill.
Ya ever notice they invented wind chill just before
they started talkinā ābout
Global Warming?Ā
Thatās so you wouldnāt noticeĀ
it wasnāt as cold anymore.
Cold is when the dieselĀ
turns to jelly
and trucks wonāt start
so thereās not deliveries until
at least noon when the sun might warm upĀ
the fuelĀ
enough to flow.
Cold is when you blow your nose
and the snot freezesĀ
before it hits the ground.
Cold is when your fingers and toes turn white and
get numb
so numb that if you take off
your mitten
and bite your fingertips
you donāt feel anything.
Cold is when your glasses donāt fog up
they ice up
and you have to scrape off
the ice with your fingernail if you wantĀ
to see.
Cold is when the windĀ
makes your eyes waterĀ
and the tears freeze on your eyelashes
so youĀ
clink when you blink.
We’ve had a ridiculously warm winter but what can you do? I love these sculptures, yours better than those done by the pros. They cheat, anyway, and use water.
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Thanks. After seeing theirs, I was thinking of looking for a box to compress and freeze blocks in, and about how I’d release the frozen blocks. But I do like being able to use my hands and not tools (though I’ve occasionally used a ruler to cut a straight edge).
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Hey you’ve got some talent! Was thinking of trying to do an igloo after that amazing snow we rec’d from the last storm. Never got around to it, though. Maybe we’ll try some sculpting after coming latest storm leaves us some material to work with. Thanks for the motivation and pix. And those pros…Wow!
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Thanks. Getting old doesn’t mean you have to grow up and stop playing in the snow! I just thought three snowballs of decreasing size was kinda boring.
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