awesome ice from Mark Daukas
Mark Daukas is a California ice sculptor that has won multiple national championships and at least one world championship in ice sculpting. For some time, he used to run Ice Master ice sculpting workshops and I took a couple variations of his courses when I was first learning to sculpt ice. I’ve collected some photos of his sculptures below, from various places. Keep reading below the galleries for more.
thanks!
First off many of these pics are not mine but used with permission; thanks to those who let me use their photos! I create a bunch of the content on this site, but no way can I do it all, and I depend on the generosity of others for some of the best stuff here!
when I've carved with (and against) Mark
Over the years, I have competed against Mark (just once, and I was pretty much a newbie), taken two short courses from him, and worked with him on the same large project.
The last time I saw him was in California, at the Ice Museum at the Orange County Fair that Roland Hernandez of Carving Ice had put together. Roland brought me out to help him with the project. Mark was responsible for a large Neptune display as well as several other sculptures. Many of the photos here are from that Ice Museum project, or the Museum the year before.
Mark used to put on Ice Master ice sculpting courses and I took 2 versions of his courses. One was a one day thing after the 1993 NICA National Championships in Ohio. Later, I took a three day course from him in Las Vegas. These courses, especially the second one, were packed with what was at the time, the highest tech info available on sculpting ice. At least, as far as I knew anyway. But I learned a lot of ice sculpting techniques, some of which I still use regularly.
And boy, did I feel full of myself after I took those courses, lol! Apologies to those who had to put up with me after I thought I knew everything, since I took a three day course and all 😬 I worked with Scott Nagel at a competition not long after and I’d bet he remembers that I was kind of a jerk. Oops.
Finally, the one time I competed against Mark was at the previously mentioned 1993 Championships. The blurriest photos here are from that, since they were taken with probably the lowest tech camera that I could manage. Mark won that event, for his 3rd NICA championship in a row. That was also one of his last NICA events that I’m aware of as well.
Mark's ice sculpting awards
As it turns out, ice sculpting championships are kind of nebulous things. Because “OFFICIAL” ice sculpting organizations are kind of hard to come by, pretty much anybody can say, oh, THIS is the world championship. For a while, the National Ice Carving Association (NICA) did about as good a job as anyone could at playing the role of an official organization, but they didn’t run a world championship, just U.S. national ones. But now, NICA is pretty much dead and buried, so that’s not a thing anymore either.
But Mark did win the first three NICA National Championships, which was a pretty impressive feat, as the competitions were well attended by skilled ice sculptors. (With the exception of me, perhaps, at the last of those three 🥴) I believe Mark has said that he’s won other National Championships, but I don’t have any info on those, since they were pre-NICA and even more pre-internet and pre-social media.
It’s my impression (and others’ too) that Mark had a contentious relationship with competition organizers over the years. He wanted to do things his way, while event organizers may have wanted things done another way. So Mark might break “rules” that possibly went against the spirit of the competition, even though those rules might not have existed until Mark broke them. He evidently tended to push boundaries, which sometimes worked out, and sometimes not.
The impressive Thor sculpture in the gallery was from one of those competitions where Mark didn’t entirely get along with the organizers. The competition was in conjunction with the Winter Olympics in Norway. Mark and Scott Rella, his teammate, didn’t win, but they got a special award for technology. My recollection is that they MAY have been disqualified, since Mark and Scott were using some pretty innovative ice sculpting techniques, like using liquid nitrogen to create the snow cape. I’ll go back and try to confirm my recollections a bit later.
At one of his Ice Master workshops that I attended, Mark also described a couple of his World Championship experiences in Japan. At the first one, Mark was somehow paired with Robert Bifulco. This is exactly the opposite of the best case scenario, because while both Robert and Mark are amazing ice sculptors, they have dramatically different approaches. Mark is Craftsman power tools and Robert is razor sharp chisels. They couldn’t be more different, so that pairing was doomed from the start.
At the second, Mark evidently had more control and I believe he worked with Jeff Bleier? (Apologies if I’m wrong here. Again, I’ll confirm.) I don’t have any pics, since I think Mark has held on to those, but I recall that the sculpture was of a big cat, a warrior, and a sorceress. Mark worked out some techniques that eliminated many of the visually distracting weld lines from the viewers’ perspective, and they won the event. So that’s his world championship.
The gist of this, is that for a time, Mark was regarded by many as possibly the best ice sculptor in the world. (I would venture to say that Mark thought so too 😜) This wasn’t a universal view; Junichi Nakamura was coming on the scene and I know they competed against each other at least once. Since then, other ice sculptors like Junichi and Steve Brice have been regarded as such, and it’s an ever changing, hard to define honor that is largely comprised of the opinions of experienced ice sculptors around the world. Meaning those that know just how hard it is to make these ice sculptures and pay attention to what’s going on in the ice sculpting universe. But while Mark probably pissed off more than a couple organizers and other ice sculptors, even those who didn’t like him respected his commitment to and skill at creating some pretty amazing ice art!