is there ice sculpting instruction in your area?

Well, obviously, ice sculpture 101 isn’t usually a class that you can take at your local community or technical college. It would be really cool if it was! (It MIGHT be possible to get some ice sculpting instruction as part of a local culinary course though.)

I never took a class like that at least. I can tell you how I learned though, which maybe isn’t the typical way, but it’s probably similar to many sculptors’ experiences. I kind of started by accident, mostly because I was pretty fascinated by ice sculptures in general.

When I was at home in New Mexico off from college, I worked at a hotel as a summer job. I would go watch the sous chef, Victor Rede, make the Sunday brunch sculptures every week. I’m sure in a dark corner of his brain, I was pretty annoying, but I never felt that. In fact, when I came back to the same job the next summer, he let ME sculpt a Father’s Day brunch sculpture. (See, I would NEVER do that, lol.)

Since I didn’t cut my arm off with the chainsaw or otherwise cause too much havoc, he let me keep going with the Sunday brunch sculptures. Victor taught and guided me through my first 3 or 4 sculptures, but after that, he more or less set me free. At any rate, I was super lucky in that I ran into someone who freely shared knowledge that they had, with no expectation of compensation. Ok, well, once he got me hooked, he no longer had to carve the Sunday brunch sculptures that summer, but I don’t know if that’s considered compensation

When I went back to college in Texas in the fall, I was pretty distracted by my newfound passion for ice sculpting. I had to go to classes and graduate and stuff, but I spent some time looking for more ice sculpting instruction.

With what I already knew from my summer of ice though, I was able to do ice sculptures for the food service at my school. Richard Anderson, the catering director there, was really enthusiastic about suddenly having an ice sculptor on campus, even though I kinda sucked.

I remember doing sculptures for some themed cafeteria dinners that they had, a Mexican themed one (a Mexican eagle, sort of like the one from the Mexican flag) and a French themed one (an Eiffel Tower, of course). Weirdly, years later, I made a friend in New Orleans that had gone to the same school and remembered my icy Eiffel Tower from a campus visit

Anyway, looking around outside of my school, I found 3 Texan ice sculptors that I ended up talking to, one way or another. In San Antonio, there was Jeff Eaton and Scott Nagel. In Dallas (a long ways away) there was Robert Bifulco. I can’t remember how I happened on Robert Bifulco, but I think he gave me some excellent advice over the phone but I didn’t meet him in person until much later. He did however, have the coolest name for an ice sculpting business ever: Bifulco’s Vanishing Sculptures.

Ok, so I was in San Antonio and as far as I could tell, there were two major ice sculptors in San Antonio: Jeff Eaton and Scott Nagel. It was a 50/50 choice and I kinda picked the wrong one. But not totally the wrong one, because Jeff Eaton was a decent ice sculptor and he was totally down with me as an ice sculpting volunteer. And he even started paying me after a bit, so he wasn’t taking advantage of me. But later, he just kind of disappeared, while Scott Nagel later opened Signature Ice Sculptures.

I think the way I ended up meeting Scott Nagel was at an ice sculpting competition at a mall. I got second and he got first. Scott and I stayed in touch (and later sculpted ice together in Canada) and Jeff Eaton vanished, just like one of Bifulco’s sculptures.

Eventually, I moved back home to New Mexico and kept going with ice sculpting. So far, I’d gotten ice sculpting instruction from the best ice sculptors that I could find in NM (Victor) and in San Antonio. But I needed more.

When I was first learning, the internet wasn’t really a thing and there certainly wasn’t anything remotely like the huge repository of ice sculpting info available on a tiny phone that you had in your pocket. But there were books and there was the National Ice Carving Association (RIP).

Some (not all) of the books on ice sculpting sucked or were pretty outdated. I eventually focused on books by Mitsuo Shimizu. Even though they were in Japanese, they were still awesome because of all the drawings. (Later, I met him too!)

Meanwhile, there was the National Ice Carving Association (NICA). They held ice carving competitions, but almost all of them were far away from NM. Despite that, I still went to a lot and started meeting ice sculptors around the country.

I did a mediocre Pegasus ice sculpture at my first NICA competition in Appleton, WI. By some miracle, I earned a bronze medal (not third place; if you scored above a 70, you got a bronze medal). That qualified me for a National Championship, which I eventually figured out a way to go to.

At Nationals, I got destroyed, but I also took a short seminar from Mark Daukas, a 3 time national champion. That was my first formal ice sculpting instruction.

Later, I took a 3 day course from Daukas in Las Vegas, and that had a definite impact on my ice sculpting career. He doesn’t offer ice sculpting instruction any more, but he ran a lot of seminars for a while and had a lot of influence on ice sculpting for a time.

For a long time after that Vegas seminar with Daukas, I didn’t get much in the way of formal ice sculpting instruction, aside from short seminars at ice sculpting tradeshows. (That used to be a thing!) I learned on the job and I learned via competitions. One major example of that was carving with Junichi Nakamura at the World Ice Art Championships. Only a few years ago though, I took a seminar with Steve and Heather Brice (there’s a link to them below) in Atlanta when they came down from Alaska. So far, that’s the last chapter of my formal ice sculpting instruction.

Ok, to recap, here are my major sources of ice sculpting instruction:

1. Victor Rede, the best ice sculptor in NM
2. Jeff Eaton and Scott Nagel, the best ice sculptors in San Antonio
3. the books of Mitsuo Shimizu (one of the best traditional Japanese ice sculptors)
4. competing at whatever ice sculpture competition I could get to, often competing against some of the best ice sculptors in the country, and occasionally, the world
5. seminars from Mark Daukas (certainly one of the best ice sculptors in the world)
6. competing on Junichi Nakamura’s team in Alaska (also one of the best ice sculptors in the world)
7. a seminar from Heather and Steve Brice, two of the best ice sculptors in the world

I hope you see a trend in the list above. Even though I started my ice sculpting career in a place where you’d hardly expect there to be any ice sculptors, New Mexico, and continuing it in a city where it’s only slightly more likely, New Orleans, I have always sought out ice sculpting instruction, however I could get it. And I would try to get it from the best sources that I could possibly get to.