Mark Daukas’ single block, gold medal ice sculpture titled “Harmony” from 1993, at the national championship ice sculpting competition
updated 9/30/23 with more stuff, the Groundhog Day video, formatting, and seo
1993 ice sculpting National Championships
This entry is not exactly breaking news, but it’s a look back at a significant ice carving competition that I’ll always remember because it was the first time that I was ever around a lot of REALLY good ice sculptors. I’ve also added a photo gallery made up of many of the ice photos that I took at the event with my cheap little camera.
The event was held in early 1993 in Youngstown, Ohio and was the third annual NICA National Championship. There were at least three future national champions (Dean Carlson, Aaron Costic, and Steve Rose) as well as the defending two-time national champion (Mark Daukas) competing at the event.
There were also a number of other carvers that would go on to compete at the Olympics and other international events as well as carvers that had definitely made a name for themselves in the ice sculpting world (For example, Randy Rupert did the ice carving for “Groundhog Day,” one of my favorite ice sculpting-related movies.)
One carver who was noticeably absent was Vivat Hongpong, who had narrowly lost to Mark Daukas at the previous two National Championships. However, Hongpong would more than make up for this in 2002 by winning the Olympic Gold medal with his son, Art, at the Cultural Olympic Ice Carving event in Provo, Utah.
my first national championship competition
Over the years, I’ve competed in a number of national championships, some of which I talk about in various places in ice sculpting secrets. For this one, I’d barely qualified. I’d scored a charitable bronze medal at an event in Appleton, WI the year before. I can’t remember the reason, but this was enough to qualify for the national championship the next year. My recollection was that was not the strict reading of the “rules,” but I didn’t really question things, since I was definitely a newbie.
At the last minute, I put together the money and made the trip from Albuquerque to Ohio. My sculpture choices were a two-block eagle dancer and a single block griffon. The griffon was something I knew how to sculpt, having done it several times since I’d started sculpting ice. The eagle dancer, not so much.
I call this event an old school kind of competition because many tools and techniques that ice sculptors commonly use now hadn’t even been invented yet. The biggest example of this is aluminum welding. For my griffon’s wings, I slotted them in, like I’d learned from my book by Mitsuo Shimizu. Almost NOBODY does that anymore.
I was a little intimidated by the level of carving that I faced at the competition, but I learned a lot and tried to get the most out of the experience. I didn’t know all that much about photography, especially ice sculpture photography, at the time. So, when I recently looked over the photos that I’d taken, I was pretty disappointed.
Using Photoshop, I tried to get the best I could out of bad photos. I thought that they would still have some value, so I added most of them to the site. If you’re using a Mac then you might think the photos are a little bright; that’s intentional because PCs display images a little darker than Macs (the gamma settings are different, if that makes sense.)
links and stuff
Let’s see, as for links, there is also the gallery of Mark Daukas’ ice. I’ll add more links later, assuming I don’t forget that this page needs more links. You could also find photos and info from this entry on the ice sculpting secrets Instagram account or the facebook page. You can comment there as well as below. And if it won’t LET you comment below, then definitely comment on fb and/or IG. Thanks!
