Sometimes, I am such a melon-head...

What a crazy, busy, fun couple of weeks it has been. First there was the Yukon Stick Gambling Championships (more on that in another entry, soon to come), then there was the Petitot Gathering (also more on that in another entry, soon to come).

Since it has been so long since my last post (two weeks!) I've decided that I had better post something before people start asking if I've disappeared off the face of the planet or worse. So, here is a picture of me that Tammy took at the Petitot Gathering - proof that I'm still alive and looking handsomer than ever...



(If you haven't been able to figure it out, I am holding a watermelon in front of my face; that's not my actual head. I know, I had to take a close look before I could be sure, too. I carved this melon for a watermelon carving competition.)

Whitehorse International Snow Sculpture Challenge

Making a snow sculpture is an a quasi-annual tradition for me, but this year I have yet to make one. I might get around to doing it, but in the meantime I'll just have to admire these works of art from last weekend's Whitehorse International Snow Sculpture Challenge.

I suspect this is a sculpture of the Whitehorse Rapids (the city's namesake). Garters are a big part of Rendezvous. Without one (or a beard or a Rendezvous button), you might get thrown into jail by the Keystone Cops. Doesn't it make you wonder, though, how they managed to get one onto that horse?

The Sundog Carvers were there. It's great seeing these young carvers try new mediums and grow as artists.

Another Sundog carving. She may look friendly, but she's actually quite frigid.

The front of another Sundog carving...

...and the back. I think the foil inside of its mouth would have been put there so they could light a coloured flame, which would have looked pretty neat.

This carving, which I think was the most technically difficult, was done by the team from Finland.

It can't have been easy to carve the stalks for the lilly pads without them breaking.

The team from Alaska (Skagway), always manages to carve an entertaining sculpture. In this one, "The Beaver's Dream", a man sits in his cabin while a couple of beavers eat it - and him.

Chewing on a wooden leg.

A cabin complete with wood in the wood stove. They did a great job on their textures.

A tribute to the "iron horse".

A fishing bear.

And finally, what I consider to be the most impressive sculpture at the Challenge. The "Winter Queen" (not sure of the actual title), is very large - and it's not easy to keep such clean and flowing lines in a carving that big. Unfortunately, the pictures don't portray its size very well. The smaller details go a long way to giving the carving some depth. This is one of those carvings that just makes you want to imagine an epic story in distant lands...

The minarets were made by filling balloons with water, allowing them to freeze part way, and then draining the rest of the unfrozen water out of the frozen shell.

Jack O'Lantern

Because Hallowe'en is my favourite holiday of the year, and because Hallowe'en just wouldn't be Hallowe'en without a jack-o-lantern, I just had to carve one.

Sorry the pictures aren't better, but my hands were shaking in fear when I took them...

Jack O'Lantern

Jack's personality lights up a room.

Because we made it back to Whitehorse in time for trick-or-treating, and because I didn't want to take the pumpkin through security at the airport, and because my sister-in-law was going to carve her own masterpiece, I decided to leave Jack with the crew at BC Children's Hospital.

I hope he didn't scare too many of the kids...

Wicked carving.

At the stick gambling competition, some people had set up tables to sell their wares.  I really liked this burl carving by John Atkinson (I hope I got his name right - it was hard to hear over all of the drumming) of Ross River.  It's full of character.

Including his duties as a single dad, it took him about six months.

A burl monster.

Look at those claws!

The ghostly little pumpkin.

I don't know what's happened to the pumpkin patch but I've had a hard time finding pumpkins this season. The first one I bought started rotting the next day. The second was all spongy and not suitable for carving. At least the kind of pumpkin carving that I like to do.

I managed to get one of those white "ghost pumpkins" to try, which was good because there wasn't much else. The ghost pumpkins were all small and mine was no exception, but I found it to be good for carving. I didn't spend a lot of time on this one, but here is the result...

A little goofy looking in the light...

...and a little creepy looking in the dark.

Siver Skate Festival - The Winners!

So, it's been a week since the Silver Skate Festival. It's about time I got these posted! Here are the winners from the event...

First Place/Artists' Choice - "Soul Dancer" by Lee (of Saskatoon) and his son and daughter-in-law (of Edmonton)

Second Place - "Small Beginnings" by (oops! I can't remember their names) of Edmonton.

Third Place - "Old Man River" by the Michaels of Whitehorse

People's Choice Award - I didn't really see a name on this carving, by Russland and Irina of Bulgaria, but my friend, Nicole, called it "A Chest of Drawers".

Carving - Day 2 (How did we do?)

This morning, we returned to the carving site and set to work on "Ol' Man River". I was glad I hadn't carved any more yesterday when the sun was hot, but began to wonder if we shouldn't have returned in the evening when things had cooled off, so that we'd have more time today to get the sculpture the way we'd like. Well, it was too late for that.

All the sculptors had to finish their carvings by 15:00 and that meant we had a lot to get done in what could be a short amount of time. However, the big question wasn't so much, "will we get it done it time?" as it was "will we get it done before it melts?" The weather forecast predicted that the temperature might climb to +4 or +9^oC.

"Starting on the detail."

"Michael W. working on the paddlewheeler steamboat."

As we carved, we were constantly asked questions by spectators and media alike. I was interviewed by the Edmonton Journal and photographers from both the Journal and the Sun took pictures. I'll check them both out tomorrow to see if we made the papers.

The carving was going well in the snow on the original block, but was rough on the sections that we formed using chopped-up snow from yesterday. As a result, and because we were now racing against time, the sculpture took on a rough appearance in those added sections.

"The face of Ol' Man River."

"The Michaels in front of Ol' Man River."

"'Ol' Man River' from the side. Look! There's a steamboat going up his beard!"

With fifteen minutes to go, we decided that we were as good as done. There were lots of little touches here and there that we would have liked to do but, by this point, they weren't going to make much difference.

"Good enough! We're done!"

While we waited for the judges to decide who the winner would be and for the tallying of the People's Choice ballots, we got to listen to the very awesome vocalizations of Tanya Tagak Gillis.

"It was so cute when her daughter sang her A-B-Cs."

The winners were announced and we came in Third Place. We got a fancy white ribbon, like the kind they give to show dogs or horses or antique cars. Classy! I'll post pictures of the other sculptures later.

The sky grew dark and the lights began to shine on the sculptures. It was very cool - the way that some of them were meant to be seen.

"Dusk falls on Ol' Man River."

"Ol' Man River in the red light of the night."

"The paddlewheeler and Ol' Man River."

"That Ol' Man River just keeps rollin' along..."

Carving - Day 1 (or at least half of it)

After waiting for a taxi that arrived twenty minutes later than it was scheduled to, Michael W. and I finally caught a ride down to Edmonton's Hawrelak Park. (I suppose that, for this trip anyway, I should rename my blog to Michaels' Meanderings.) The roads were bad. Instead of getting the freezing rain that had been predicted, the city was getting coated in a thick layer of fat and slushy snow. Which is better than freezing rain, of course.

Down at the park, we met up with a few of the carvers and waited for the rest to arrive. Most of the carvers were from Saskatchewan and Alberta, but there was also a team from Bulgaria. I guess that makes this an international snow carving competition!

After a few more arrivals, we drew numbers for our snow blocks. We got block number 3, which is the first block you see as you enter the snow carving area - a premium piece of snow sculpture real-estate.

"Cutting the block down to size."

The snow block was hard, having been packed and set in -20^oC weather. Only being allowed to use the snow within our roped-off carving space, we needed to cut our 4'x4'x8' block of snow down so that we could use the snow for other parts of the carving. We got started.

It was warm and getting warmer. We were lucky that the sun stayed behind the clouds, but around 11:00, the snow started to get as soft as warm butter. Then, the sun started to make brief appearances. We watched as a little gnome that someone had carved before we arrived started rotting in the heat.

And that was it for carving for the day. We decided it was better to stop and resume in the morning when the weather is cooler. At 13:00 we stopped roughing things in, had lunch, and watched in wonder as other carvers started adding in their details. We realised that, if we had tried to add any detail, it would have been gone by tomorrow afternoon, which is when the judging happens. And it's supposed to go above freezing again tomorrow.

"Michael W. and me and our roughed-in snow sculpture."

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the them of the Silver Skate Festival is "River Valley Reverie". In keeping with the theme, we're carving "Ol' Man River". It's just roughed-in now; it'll look better when it's done...

"...or will it? The heat goes to Michael W.'s head."

Yes, it could get worse.

I am looking at the bright side.

Really I am.

I've carved in wet snow before. There are some advantages to doing so, however slight. For one thing, our carving won't be depending on any gravity-defying cuts that will only hold with light, cold snow. Many of our "competitors"¹ are likely to be using this visually impressive approach in their designs (which had to be submitted a couple of weeks ago). For another, now I know that if I make a bad cut, I can always pack some of the damp snow back onto the carving (making it less of a carving a more of a sculpture).

So, while I'm looking at the bright side, things could still get worse.

I'm wondering if, way back when, Father Time and Mother Nature got together and had a daughter, Mary Weather, who is going through some sort of teenaged hissy-fit.

The forecast now calls for freezing rain.

As I look out the window of my 11^th floor hotel room and marvel at the brown blanket of haze hovering over the city, it makes me sure of one thing: I hate global warming.


¹Snow sculptors aren't really competitive. They're always willing to help each other out by sharing tools, advice and whatever. When was the last time you saw a hockey player pass an opponent his stick? To use?

HORRIBLE!

Oh, NO! The weather forecast for Edmonton says it's going to be above freezing, tomorrow, and Saturday!

The conditions are going to be horrible for snow carving!

It's -1^oC and sunny right now. The snow blocks are probably melting already and, if they haven't been formed yet, are going to be full of uncarveable little chunks of ice.

(Not to sound pessimistic - that's just the way it is.)

Does this mean I'm "professional"?

Aside from the occasional snowmen, my foray into snow carving began when my neighbourhood community association held a front-yard snow sculpture competition. In the hefty pile of snow at the end of the driveway, I carved a thing that looks like a...I'm not sure what it looked like, but with the bright food colouring I sprayed over it and the lack of entrants into my age category, I came in first place!

That competition whetted my appetite. It wasn't the prize, it was the carving. I really, really liked carving snow! I started trying other carvings and learning about how different types of snow behave.

Fast-forward to my first year of University. A group of fellow students and I got together to compete in the Winterlude Ice Dreams snow sculpture competition, academic category. Our sculpture, which we affectionately named "Ed the Head", which was supposed to be nothing more than a humorous carving, was suddenly interpreted as a "political statement". It was when Mike Harris was Premier of Ontario, after all.

"Education Cutz"
(those are scissors in the foreground)

We got some nice, but unexpected, radio and print publicity over the political statement that we weren't actually making, and took first place in our category, winning $500.

We followed up on our success the year after with our next "political statement".

"The price of a quality education in the '90s"

Again, we took first place and won $500.

The following two years, we only took third place. The event was now held on different dates and exams and very bad weather got in the way. Still, it was fun and the prize money didn't matter.

The year after that, the City of Ottawa and National Capital Commission cancelled the Ice Dreams competition. In protest, I wrote a letter to the Ottawa Citizen and a bunch of us went out onto the Rideau Canal to make, for the first time, a real protest sculpture.

The story reached people as far away as France and Australia. It was on the radio, television and in the newspapers. The National Capital Commission called us for a meeting and we agreed to host an event called Snow Sculpture 101, where we would build small blocks of snow and teach people how to carve. They agreed to bring back the competition, but it wouldn't be held on the canal any more. This year, they haven't even had snow.

I moved away from Ottawa shortly after that and, other than a front-yard carving that I started but never finished (thanks to a Chinook), hadn't done any carving until last year.

The North is small and word gets around. I was called out of the blue one day and was asked if I would be willing to help out with Team Saskatchewan's carving at Whitehorse's International Show Sculpture Challenge. They were a team member short. Of course, I jumped at the chance to carve again. I had never worked on an abstract piece before and it was challenging. Overall, the event was great and I got the chance to meet professional carvers from all over the place. It was my first time carving with professionals.

"Go with the flow."

At the same time as Whitehorse's International Snow Carving Challenge, some friends and I did a small carving at the "friends and family" carving area during the Sourdough Rendezvous. That little carving got us a chance to meet Rick Mercer and my hands appeared on his show!

"The Oldest Sourdough."

"The Oldest Sourdough."

I got a really neat phone call the other day. It was from one of the snow carvers that I met at the Whitehorse International Snow Sculpture Challenge. He asked me if I would be interested in travelling to the Silver Skate Festival in Edmonton to compete. Transportation and accommodations would be provided and I would receive $200, excluding any prize money I might win.

Well, who could pass up an opportunity like that!?

So, since this is the first time I'm getting paid to do a carving, does this mean that I am now a professional snow carver?

Now for the hard part...coming up with and idea for something to carve...

Carved-up batch from the pumpkin patch.

It's that time of year again! Unlike last year, I didn't have a "competition" to carve for, but that didn't matter. I enjoy carving pumpkins, so I could hardly resist getting my hands on these two little gourds.

While I'm not that happy with how the pictures turned out, I am happy with the pumpkins. Maybe one day, my pumpkins will appear on extremepumpkins.com. Until then, enjoy!

Pumpkin #1

"A jolly fellow."

"Hyuk, hyuk!"

"So happy, he's glowing."

"Pumpkin #2 - An evil Ernest Borgnine?"

"Mu-hu-hwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

"It's evil Ernest! Beware!!!"