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Cold Snow and Sugar Cubes 

or how do you sculpt an elephant?

I avoided snow sculpting contests because they are cold weather affairs. Rather than sculpting warm clay-like snow they build snow cubes with big reinforced wooden boxes which are packed with snow. The boxes are removed and the sculptors have at it. These events regard warm weather as a curse. The work these artists do is less forgiving because once they've made a mistake its hard to undo. Its more like carving a statue out of marble. If Michelangelo had accidentally knocked off David's arm (or anything else) putting it back together with glue just wouldn't have cut it.

I first got a chance to carve a block of snow in Two Harbors. They built some small cubes of snow, 4x4 feet along with their larger 8x8 feet blocks for their snow carnival. Here's what I came up with:

You can see the base of the square block at the bottom. In case you can't tell what it is, its a baby dinosaur breaking out of its egg.

Since that time I've done a few more sugar cubes. I'm still a little tentative. At Palo I tried to sculpt an elephant. I didn't have as much time as I would have liked but I got a rough elephant carved. Note the big block of unsculpted snow at the base. The beast was too large to be supported by its legs so I needed the snow to support the rest. I had hoped to carve the remaining snow into a baby elephant but ran out of time and talent.

I've gotten a little more confident at least with smaller projects. This much smaller sculpture turned out pretty well.

Notice the pitted quality of the snow. I suspect that putting fallen snow immediately into a container guarantees a finer grain of snow. If snow sits for a few days it begins to harden and is much more lumpy. 

I suggest that to carve a snow sculpture you find an appliance box and cut off its top and bottom. Fill it up with freshly fallen snow and let it sit for a couple of days. Pull or cut off the cardboard and go to it.

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