New Orleans ice sculptures
It makes little sense to me to build an entire website about my New Orleans themed ice art unless I talk about some of the quintessentially New Orleans ice sculptures that came before. On this page, I’ve added some of my favorites and rambled on with some of the stories around them 😉
my first New Orleans ice sculpture
I sculpted my first New Orleans ice sculpture for a wedding before I even lived here. It was my cousin’s wedding, at the Omni Royal Orleans, in the Quarter, which is across the street from the Louisiana Supreme Court building. (At the time, that beautiful building was the headquarters for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries though.) My cousin lived in Philadelphia, but she and her fiancé had history in Nola, so they were having a destination wedding.
What pretty much nobody knew was that I had a secret plan to move to New Orleans from Albuquerque. So I was coming into town early to go to a job interview. But I also had another secret plan: to make an ice sculpture for my cousin’s wedding reception.
my secret plans in New Orleans
I didn’t know much about New Orleans, I’d only been once before for the most recent Mardi Gras. But I knew I liked it. So I set about figuring out what would be my first ice sculpture in a city I knew little about. I settled on two saxophones arranged in the shape of a heart, as my wedding gift. I’m sure if you asked me at the time, I’d have thought I’d end up making lots of those in the future, knowing I was likely about to move here. But it was the only time I’ve ever made it. Somewhere, I have a photo. However, it was back before everything was digital, so it may be hard to find. We might have to settle for a sketch 😉
I’d arrived in New Orleans with plenty of time for the ice sculpting and the job interview. With the bulk of the ice sculpting figured out, it was time for the job interview. I was applying to work as a sculptor for Mardi Gras floats with Kern Artists. And as you might have guessed, I got the job! So my New Orleans odyssey had begun!
Since we don’t have a pic of that first saxophone heart sculpture at the Omni, how about this fleur de lis ice bar at the Omni?
The Fairmont Hotel and the Palace Cafe
If you read my account of how I started sculpting ice in Nola, you know that I bartended at the Palace Cafe and sculpted ice at the old Fairmont Hotel (now the Roosevelt). I carved a few sculptures at the Palace Cafe too, in their butcher cooler. But when you spent any length of time in that cooler, you REALLY smelled like fish when you came out. And not the wonderful aroma of their Catfish Pecan, either! So, to have a social life, I more often opted for the basement of the Fairmont Hotel instead.
Working with the Fairmont was a good bit of fortune. I had a short stint at Kern Sculpture when I first arrived in Nola. That had paid the unexpected dividend of an introduction to Fairmont Executive Chef Nick Rabalais and then Catering Directory Jerry Ursin. Also, Chef Jim Shields was there, and knowing him helped out later. Because I developed a good relationship with them, they gave me a fair amount of latitude as to what I could sculpt for their events.
ambitious projects at the Fairmont
When an upcoming Presidential visit included a stop at the Fairmont, I volunteered, foolishly, to create an ice version of the Presidential Seal. This design is a perfect one for a CNC machine, but I didn’t have one. Engraving it by hand takes hours! (And then later, for another visit at Anne Rice’s old place, I recreated it 
Sometimes, I’m not the fastest learner.)
But at the Fairmont, I also sculpted fun things like this Mardi Gras jester. The tricky part of that sculpture was that there wasn’t a reliable supply of clear ice blocks in New Orleans at the time. So I had to work with old-style “sort of clear” ice blocks, cut out the cloudy parts, and reassemble the ice. Fortunately, completely clear ice blocks are easier to come by nowadays.
a new studio on Burgundy Street
Because I couldn’t carve my sculptures at the Fairmont forever, I eventually built a studio in the Marigny on Burgundy Street. This worked out well when we got a lot of sculptures to do for the surprise Super Bowl that got moved to New Orleans in the wake of 9/11. The Super Bowl generally means Super Busy for ice sculptors, at least in the host city!
The very LAST sculptures I had to do were a couple of New England Patriots sculptures for the after-party. Weirdly, I wasn’t too stressed about them; I mean, it’s not like it was going to be a victory party, right? The Greatest Show on Turf (the Rams) was going to roll right over the Patriots!
Of course, the party was at the Fairmont, which only added to my complacency. So after a crazy run of Super Bowl ice sculptures, I was finishing up the second Patriots sculpture while I listened to the game in the freezer. I suppose it was around the start of the second half that it occurred to me that the Patriots had a chance of winning. As the game went on, the stress ratcheted up and I frantically finished and headed to the Fairmont.
While these two aren’t exactly examples of New Orleans ice sculptures, I include them here because they were my first two forays into “fine ice art” sculptures. Plus, Katrina took both of them out (no power 
)
the Marigny: good points and bad
Back when I made all my sculptures AT the Fairmont, deliveries there were easy, just an elevator ride away. Driving through Super Bowl traffic, even though the Marigny was close, was another story. Suffice to say, the jubilant Patriots fans got their ice sculptures and never knew the difference. I, on the other hand, will never forget it! And I was happy to give them a dawn of a dynasty, Lombardi trophy ice sculpture that wouldn’t seem like a cruel joke 
While apparently not quite close enough for Super Bowl parties, the Marigny location proved to be a prescient choice after Katrina. Although the catastrophic storm wiped out all of my business for months, at least it didn’t flood us there. Nola residents know that close to the river, like the Marigny, is “high ground” in the city. That’s even though you can watch boats float by ABOVE you on the other side of the river levee 
A few of the brunch sculptures I carved in the Harrah’s Casino loading dock, not long after they reopened.
Post Katrina: the rise of the Fleur de lis
Oddly, fleur-de-lis ice sculptures (or really fleur-de-lis ANYTHING) weren’t really as big a thing before Katrina hit New Orleans. And the Saints had trouble filling up the Superdome too. All of that changed post-Katrina. Suddenly, the Saints had a waiting list and the fleur-de-lis was everywhere as residents took pride in the city’s rebuilding. As Nola residents figured out how to go forward, the city slowly reopened.
Not surprisingly, Harrah’s Casino was an early opener. (LOTS of Louisiana tax revenue!) As I figured out how to restart my ice sculpting business, Chef Jim Shields (from the Fairmont) was in charge of a good portion of the food and beverage at the casino. That meant I carved a lot of Nola-themed ice sculptures in the casino’s underground loading dock.
an alligator and a governor
Not long before Katrina, I’d done my first big movie ice sculpture, for All the King’s Men. Initially, they asked for a pelican, so they could fill its beak with strawberries, for a banquet scene. I suggested that a gator head might be a better fit; roomier at least. Babysitting the gator sculpture on set was a memorable experience. At one point, an assistant on set even reprimanded me, because I was taking pics all over the place 
It was exciting, waiting to see if my ice sculpture would make it into the movie. And there was a lot of buzz about the movie since it was a remake of a Best Picture winner. I wondered if I might have an ice sculpture in an Academy Award-winning film?!
It turned out that I had to wait a long time. Apparently partly because of Katrina, they held up its release for a while. When it finally came out, the Oscar buzz faded away. But at least my ice sculpture was in it and even made it into a review 🙂 And for the Baton Rouge premiere, I created what I think was my first ice portrait, of former Governor Huey Long, who the author based Willie Stark on in the movie.
Oh, and I would get another chance at having an ice sculpture in a Best Picture winner. But another time…
the Who Dat Nation rejoices
Lombardi Gras, the fantastical juxtaposition of Mardi Gras and a Super Bowl victory parade, was a fitting exclamation point for Nola’s post-Katrina Renaissance. And Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees inspired my 9 foot tall “Cool Brees” sculpture not long after in Alaska. I leveraged the region’s euphoria and the prospect of an instant monument to fund the project and generate a significant donation to the Brees Dream Foundation. I get to make a giant sculpture in cold dark Alaska (9˚F, surely 
), and Drew’s charitable foundation gets a chunk of money. Sounds like win-win!
Regarding that Super Bowl, how odd is it that it pitted perhaps New Orleans’ favorite son vs. our adopted hero? The only thing weirder would have been if it had played out in the Superdome like it has for LSU’s national championship games recently.
Back where it all began: the Omni Royal Orleans
Isn’t it funny how things come back around? Late last year, the GM at the Rib Room in the Omni Royal Orleans asked me to create ice sculptures for their weekly Sunday brunch. The GM let me sculpt basically anything I wanted, which is the best plan if you want me to spend far more time than I should on your ice sculpture 
Not surprisingly, their brunch has a lot of Nola flair, so I tasked myself to create a wide range of New Orleans ice sculptures to adorn the buffet. Amongst my creations, there was more than one fleur de lis, a jester, a saxophone, and, at the end, a King Cake and an ice portrait of Louis Armstrong. Why the end you ask? The pandemic, of course. The crowds of Mardi Gras left us sadly open to more than our fair share of coronavirus, and the city was hit early and hard.
my last New Orleans ice sculpture?
As we all face the pandemic together, the future is far from certain. We don’t know if New Orleans, not to mention the world, will ever be the same. But I hope so. (Well, hopefully not exactly the same. Maybe a little wiser and more just.) However, the pandemic has devastated virtually every business in New Orleans that touches tourism and special events. Some have closed and will never return. But I for one, seriously doubt I’ve done my last New Orleans ice sculpture since I’ve made a commitment to stick it out and be ready for “normal,” whenever that is.
New Orleans will end someday. Whenever it finally comes, I suspect it will be a monster hurricane that deals the final blow for this city that celebrates life, even in the face of death. However, it would be sad indeed if we remained crippled til then by this stealthy, invisible foe. But New Orleans has a lot of practice coming back, so I’m confident. Meanwhile, as we wait anxiously for Nola’s second renaissance this century, I plan to be sculpting away in my freezer, much like Edward Scissorhands in his attic, at the end of that fairytale 
But I’ll be thinking of the New Orleans that I’ve come to know in the last couple of decades, and probably most of my ice sculptures will be Nola ice art.
