Burr Rasmussen waits hopefully for a drink at the ice bar in the Aurora Ice Museum. While this pic is from the winter, believe it or not, the ice museum is open year round, making it a summertime ice success story!
updated 2/26/24 when restored to the site with links plus a lot more words and stuff
dreaming of summertime ice
As I add this old post (somewhat updated) to the new ice sculpting secrets site, summer is yet to come. And actually, we’re still in the midst of a largely snowless winter for much of the country. (Meanwhile, some who were previously on the fence are starting to realize that climate change is really a thing.)
One of my facebook friends just posted: “using the A/C in February. What’s the summer going to be like?” I didn’t need the reminder. Since I’ve lived in and around New Orleans, I can’t say I’ve ever really looked forward to the summers here. It’s just too damn hot 🥵 And it’s not going to get any better, on average.
The heat is bad. And add to that the ever-possible threat of a storm quickly blowing up in the Gulf, and summers down here can sometimes be a nervous waiting game. Maybe add a touch of heat stroke to that anxiety, and the great idea hits: How cool would it be to have a large scale indoor ice event in the summer, right when we REALLY need it!
I enjoy my freezer studio escape in the hot summers; the only part that sucks is getting all bundled up to go in and then unbundled when you come out. So I start musing about what it would take to put on a big summertime ice display, and even start thinking about ideas for sculptures, and then BAM!, I remember what happened to IceSpace in London and “Cold Wave Over Nice” in France.
summertime ice is risky
I ALMOST went to both of these long ago summertime ice events, one to work at and the other to see. In the summer of 2001, Inaxi (a company in the Netherlands that puts on sand and ice/snow events) put together a large tented ice and snow event in the French Riviera city of Nice, France. (I had to learn that it’s pronounced like “niece,” not nice.) I’d been invited to work on sculptures at the event and I really wanted to go, but I couldn’t make it work. So all I got to do was look at pictures of the pretty impressive sculptures that resulted.
Unfortunately, the event was never repeated, unlike almost all the winter ice and snow events that Inaxi used to run (like Bruges, Belgium and Eindhoven, NL) The rumor that I got was that it didn’t make financial sense to do it again, which would mean that they didn’t sell enough tickets. (I’m not privy to much in the way of hard facts on this though, so if you know different, then fill me in please.)
As for IceSpace, it was a huge ice lounge, etc. in a freezer tent that was set up near the Tower Bridge in London in early summer, 2006. I was in London at that time and I knew about IceSpace, so I made sure to find out all the details so I could make time to check it out. The organizers were thinking big: in one post, I read that they were expecting 400 visitors an hour.
When I got there, I felt like the guy who’d waited until too late to go to the party. All the beer was gone and everyone had gone home except for the guy passed out on the couch! Actually, the whole event had already been torn down and was just a vacant lot with some trash still lying around. The tent was gone, everything. I didn’t just barely miss it; I REALLY missed it.
Frustratingly, it was supposed to be still going on; I’d checked the dates. One site indicated that it was supposed to be up for eight weeks, but closed after only three. Apparently, too many people liked the summer heat more than they let on and the thought of pricey drinks served in a giant freezer wasn’t appealing at the time. I dunno, I was looking forward to a nice vodka martini in an ice glass. (Shaken, not stirred of course; MI6 is less than 4 miles away 😉)
this cool abstract ice piece was part of IceSpace. photo courtesy of Adlee Sara.
making summertime ice a reality
Whether it’s bad marketing, bad management, high temperatures, or something else, big summer indoor ice venues have so far seemed to have more trouble than I would think they would; and apparently more than others would think as well. In contrast, a couple of more modest ventures, the Aurora Ice Museum near Fairbanks, AK and an ice lounge in Dubai (a place much hotter than Nice or London will ever get), have managed to stay open year round.
Called the Chillout Ice Lounge and set in a mall, the Dubai venue was opened in 2007 while the Aurora Ice Museum, at Chena Hot Springs Resort near Fairbanks, Alaska, debuted in late 2003 as the Aurora Ice Hotel. (And as I update this post in 2024, BOTH of these venues are still going strong!)
Aside from it’s superhot location, the Chillout Ice Lounge has another claim to fame: it could be the only ice lounge in the world with hot food and drinks on its menu. Instead of the ice glasses, hot drinks are served in insulated cups. The lounge has evidently done well, even right from the start.
even when it works, summertime ice is rarely easy
The Aurora Ice Hotel, on the other hand, had a much tougher first year. I got to see it not too long after it was built, when I went to the World Ice Art Championships in March of 2004. As the United States’ first ice hotel, it ran afoul of fire codes and was nearly shut down by the fire marshal. Intended from the beginning to stay up year round, it was dubbed “The Dumbest Business Idea of the Year” by Forbes.com when Alaskan summer heat was too much for the insulated and liquid cooled structure.
That summer, Chena Hot Springs owner Bernie Karl provided the memorable quote: “I had a frozen asset. It’s now a liquid asset,” and then promptly made plans to rebuild. It was later reopened as the Aurora Ice Museum in a bid to steer clear of the fire codes. Technically, it’s not a hotel, but you can rent a portion of the museum, and you’re welcome to stay there overnight if you do. (wink, wink) The museum, which is filled with ice works by world champion carvers Steve and Heather Brice, is now lauded as an example of responsible environmental stewardship because the museum is actually cooled by harnessing the geothermal energy in the surrounding hot springs.
For ice in the summer, it seems it’s “build it and they might come.” In the winter, people are often looking for something to do, while in the summer, they might have a tough time choosing what to do. To give yourself a chance against the plethora of summertime activities, it seems a bit of luck is required, along with a lot of innovation and perseverance. Modest expectations for summertime ice don’t seem to hurt either.
epilogue: dreams of summertime ice finally come true!
Since I first wrote this post, I did finally get my large summertime ice display, sort of. It certainly wasn’t as big as IceSpace, or even as big as the Aurora Ice Museum. But it was definitely bigger than anything I had going on in New Orleans in the summer.
a manta ray in a viewing window: one of the designs that I got to come up with for the summertime ice event that I’d been hoping for, the Ice Museum at the 2011 OC Fair
Roland Hernandez of Carving Ice invited me to work on a the Ice Museum for the 2011 Orange County Fair. And I did get to design my own sculptures for it. Roland had created an ice museum for the previous year’s fair, and this 2011 project built on it. Although it was a great success, with lines of people waiting to get in, it had a little trouble as well, with a significant meltdown at one point. But they fixed it and the museum kept welcoming visitors.
this video above looks to be very early in the Ice Museum run. All of my contributions, the manta ray, sea turtle, and reef shark are visible and intact, while Daukas’ King Neptune display is definitely unfinished. Another video (that won’t allow playback here) shows the museum later in its run. Some of the sculptures have been replaced and possibly moved. Also there are enhancements to my reef shark piece and Daukas’ Neptune is finished. But the ice is under stress since you can see how frosty it is, indicated that a lot of moisture is getting into the museum freezer.
I can’t find that I ever wrote a blog post about that experience, so that’s something I will have to fix at a later date. And I also definitely need to talk about Roland and Carving Ice. The sculptures that I worked on for that include the manta ray, sea turtle, and reef shark designs that are already on the site. The fan coral design also resulted from that event.
In addition, Mark Daukas’ gallery has a lot of pics from there and I do have a so far incomplete (like no info about it) gallery from the museum.
links and stuff
I’m not going to pretend that summertime ice never works. It’s just that larger ice events face bigger risks in the summer. Duh 🙄 But there are still lots of icy places to go in the summer aside from Chillout and Aurora. I have at least a few other examples just here on the site (some are no longer with us, however). These include Icebar Orlando, minus5 Orlando 2014, minus5 Orlando rebuild, and the upcoming minus5 Vegas and South Beach ice bar galleries.
Finally, you could also find photos and info from this entry and summertime ice on the ice sculpting secrets Instagram account or the facebook page. ice sculpting secrets is also on TikTok, although videos there aren’t really tied to posts as much. You can comment on IG and fb as well as below (if I’ve fixed that). And if it won’t LET you comment below, then definitely comment on fb and/or IG. Thanks!
