what in the world is fine ice art?
fine ice art? huh?
Fine ice art? Yes, I totally made it up. And it’s “fine ice art,” because “ice fine art” sounds stupid 
According to various sources, “fine art” is defined as art that has no practical purpose, that is only done for the sake of creating art. The artist might be hoping to evoke an emotion or to express an idea. Or perhaps, it’s simply intended to be beautiful or technically excellent.
My fine ice art sculptures then, are never delivered to an event. They’re never used to keep the seafood cold and nobody ever takes shots out of them. In most instances, I’ll be the only one who ever sees them, and they live and probably die in my freezer.
Ok, so not ALL of my fine ice art lives and dies in the freezer. Once in a while, one escapes, and the results can be sad to watch 😂 (Sound on!)
ice art without compromise
But more than simply being ice sculptures that are never delivered, my art is ice art without compromise. Because they’ll never melt, at least while it matters, you don’t have to worry about making the supports thick enough to last. Details can be subtle and parts can be delicate, since they’ll never have to survive transport further than to the other side of the freezer. (However, my distressed fleur de lis broke at least twice during its unusually long life in my freezer.)
Ice doesn’t only change by melting, of course. It also sublimates and sometimes even undergoes creep. Subtle surfacing and polishing might only last minutes due to sublimation (ice going straight to water vapor). Thus, the freezer only slows the change, it doesn’t stop it.
But the freezer does slow the change enough, long enough to capture some version of perfection with photos. So my fine ice art is ice sculpture + photography. Yet all photography really is is recording light with some sort of sensor or substrate, whether it’s digital or film.
Because the end point is an image, I have to then also control the light and its interaction with the ice. I spend a lot of time making adjustments to both. At times, the result is surprising, and really doesn’t look like ice anymore. How much like its real world counterpart I could make an ice sculpture look? Could I make Pinocchio appear a real boy? 
Two organically styled fleurs-de-lis. I hope you can see a difference and tell which would be considered fine ice art.
who makes this stuff?
So who creates this art? Well there aren’t many. But it has been around for a little while. Back before they were sure if the Internet was going to be a thing, Mark Daukas created a couple examples of what I would definitely classify as fine ice art. He came out with a series of posters: a male torso, an angel holding a lyre, and an overly enlarged photo of an amazing competition piece that he and Scott Rella made. In some aspects, the first two were not unlike the artwork you see on this site. Although I don’t yet have his anatomy chops, and perhaps never will, I have the advantage of a number of technological advances since then. In addition, I’ve fortunately been able to already produce more than two artworks, so there’s that as well
Now, you could argue that any ice sculptor that creates ice art for photo shoots is creating fine ice art. However, I’m completely unaware of anyone who does that regularly, or has built a website devoted to it. (I think this site is the first of its kind.) Many have created that sort of art, but only on rare occasions.
perhaps you’ve seen it before, my first piece of fine ice art, my ice dragon
no firm definition for the art or the artists
Some ice sculptor probably read the last couple of paragraphs and thought, what about Steve and Heather? Yes, Steve and Heather Brice would be considered fine ice artists by any measure. They have even filled up their own amazing ice museum with their icy artworks. And on occasion, they photograph their ice and they sell prints as well. However, they are not an exact fit for my definition. (and neither is Junichi Nakamura, in case he also came to mind)
But who cares if they fit my definition or not? Artists, ice and otherwise, define themselves via their art and their ideas, and not with the categories that others decide on. In fact, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do here: define myself and my art, at least at this moment,
All that said, I can think of another artist who is a pretty close fit to my definition: Dan Bergin of Apple Ice in New York. And thus far, he is far more prolific than I am! His recent Instagram feed is an icy menagerie of video game characters, religious figures, various animals, and much more! And in his words, he “took a pic and smashed it up,” after he created his “quarantine pieces.” 
courtesy of and © 2020 Dan Bergin
what's next?
I’m not sure yet if I have a good idea with this website and these artworks. I imagine I won’t know for a while. But it doesn’t matter if it’s a good idea or not, because I need to get these ideas out of my head and out into the world. I think if I do that to the best of my ability, the rest will take care of itself.
Even without COVID-19, we’ve been headed towards a silicon connected world for decades already. And I doubt that will change anytime soon. In addition, I can see how climate change could have a devastating effect on some ice art and the places that you’ve been able to see it up to now. There are signs that that’s already happening. Given the changes we’re facing, perhaps there’s an opportunity to carve out a little niche for fine ice art in the world of tomorrow.
