Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Sculpture prompts prairie snow & ice memories December 12, 2022

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 5:00 AM
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Sakatah Carvers pack their equipment after carving an ice sculpture at the corner of Central Avenue and Fourth Street/Minnesota State Highway 60 in Faribault during Winterfest. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo December 2022)

ONCE UPON A TIME, which is longer ago than I care to admit, I welcomed winter. Snow equated outdoor fun on the farm of my youth in southwestern Minnesota. Prairie winds swept the snow into rock-hard mountainous drifts around buildings and windbreaks. My siblings and I pulled on our winter gear and for hours played atop those mountains and the snow piles mounded by Dad with the bucket of his tractor.

The completed sculpture. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo December 2022)

And then there were the icicles hanging along the milkhouse roof. Those became swords for hard-fought battles against one another. Ice clashing against ice until a sword, or both, broke. Somehow we avoided poking out each other’s eyes.

I found those icicles, some the length of our torsos, magical. They appeared seemingly overnight, glistening in the sunlight, water frozen clear and beautiful.

The other side of the sculpture, photographed from across the street, with part of the equipment to the left. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo December 2022)

Likewise, I felt the same about ice patches that formed on field’s edge. To slide across that ice in my buckle overshoes proved freeing and powerful. I was a champion figure skater in my own imaginative world. When the ice rink opened in my hometown of Vesta in the shadow of the grain elevator, I donned my Aunt Dorothy’s hand-me-down skates and raced from one end to the other, flying like the fierce prairie wind.

Today I no longer skate or engage in sword fights. Rather I approach ice with the cautiousness of a Baby Boomer who’d rather not break a bone. I avoid ice if possible.

The teddy bear sculpture up close, glistening in the holiday and street lights. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo December 2022)

But there’s an exception. Ice sculptures. These are a thing of beauty, reminding me of long ago ice ponds and ice swords and my once-love of ice. Artists who can carve a block of ice into something magical and beautiful garner my appreciation. That includes the team from Sakatah Carvers, Signs and Creations, who recently sculpted a teddy bear inside a stocking for Faribault’s Winterfest.

The second I snapped this frame, the ice carver blocked my view of the sculpture. But I like the results, highlighting the artist. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo December 2022)

While I didn’t witness the actual creation of the ice sculpture, I saw the warmly-dressed crew packing up their gear afterwards. It takes a love of winter and of ice to engage in this art form, which recalls for me prairie winters past of snow and ice.

© Copyright 2022 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Ice art in rural Minnesota February 16, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:52 AM
Tags: , , , ,

CAN YOU IMAGINE how impressed I would be if ever I viewed the Saint Paul Winter Carnival snow and ice sculptures?

Up until Sunday, the only ice sculptures familiar to me clung to milkhouse and house rooflines or clumped like frozen waterfalls along bluffs in the Mississippi RiverValley.

In the winters of my youth, when winter truly was winter with mountains of snow from which to build forts and an abundance of icicles from which to grab swords, I welcomed the season.

The clash of icicle against icicle in a swordfight with my brothers and sisters entertained me between rounds of shoving manure into gutters and feeding cows and bedding straw and carrying pails of steaming milk replacer to calves huddled in the calf barn.

That and memories of boot-skating across patches of frozen water in the farmyard and along the edges of the cornfield encompassed my general experiences with ice.

Until Sunday.

For the first time, I viewed ice as anything but Nature’s art or a source of youthful entertainment or a peril to be avoided.

Horse and sleigh ice sculpture in Waseca, a rural southern Minnesota community.

Just south of the Waseca County Courthouse, partially in the shadow of a downtown building and along busy State Street/Minnesota Highway 13, artists Adam Scholljegerdes and Joe Christenson, with assistance from their families, crafted a horse and sleigh from ice blocks in celebration of Waseca’s 62nd annual Sleigh and Cutter Festival.

She’s a beauty.

For the first time ever in 62 years, ice sculpting was added to Sleigh and Cutter festivities. The event typically involves ice harvesting from Clear Lake, something which did not happen this year due to warm weather and open water. The ice sculpture is just south of the Waseca County Courthouse, a snippet seen here to the right.

Of course, I have nothing with which to compare this work of art. But suffice to say that the pair’s rendition of a horse pulling a sleigh impressed me, my husband and plenty of others who stopped to photograph the ice sculpture, even sit on the sleigh and pet the horse.

Even an ice horse needs petting.

This ice sculpture is a new addition to the annual winter festival which spans several weeks and weekends in February. This year’s fest, which included events like snowmobile races, card tournaments, ice fishing and a parade, runs through February 19. One final event, a Children’s Dream Catcher fundraiser for terminally-ill children in the Waseca area, is set for March 24.

For now, the ice sculpture serves as a visual focal point for the Sleigh and Cutter Festival.

Make haste, I say, if you want to view this temporary work of art in rural southern Minnesota.

This close-up image shows the blocks of ice that comprise the horse. Artists labored nearly 3 1/2 days transforming 50 blocks of ice into this work of art. Sculptor Adam Scholljegerdes worked on a team that recently won first place in the amateur division ice sculpting competition at the Saint Paul Winter Carnival. He is an artist at Brushwork Signs in Faribault, where I live. Joe Christenson has competed at the Saint Paul Winter Carnival since 1986.

An ice-sculpting sponsor points to the Waseca community's rural roots.

A back view of the sculpture, looking toward historic buildings in Waseca's downtown business district.

CLICK HERE for more information about Waseca’s Sleigh and Cutter Festival.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling