Art for the Moment: Fairbanks Ice Festival 2020

[Øivind Tøien]

Ice Alaska (https://www.icealaska.org/) continues this year at the new location for the Fairbanks Ice Park at the Fairgrounds, hosting the 2020 World Ice Art Championships. Again, for reference, all my posted images from previous years were contained in the following threads:
https://nikongear.net/revival/index.php?topic=8425.0 and http://nikongear.net/revival/index.php/topic,5660.0.html .
The excellent Chinese ice carvers were missing this year due to the recent events, but otherwise it was about the same size as last year.

At the entrance we were greeted by an enormous snow sculpture of a dinosaur scull, perhaps to remind as that those creatures once also roamed in Alaska:
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I made sure to arrive in daylight to see all the sculptures in the different lighting. Unfortunately many of them were partially covered by a recent snow fall.

Stayin' Alive won 1st place in two block classic.
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The Getaway
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Spirit of the Forest won 5th place multiblock classic; the snow on the sculpture blended nicely in with that on the trees.
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Who's the Beast?
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The Heart of the Universe won a well deserved 1st place in multiblock classic. It was absolutely memerising how those lines converged. It received a lot of attention.
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I came back for it after dark:
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Not Forgotten won the 3rd place in multiblock classic and had some amazing details.
Behind it was our local team Heather and Steve Brice, Spehen Dean, David "Pablo" Smith.
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Waiting for Prey won 1st place in single block classic.
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Big cats were obviously popular, Lion won 5th place double block classic.
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Blossom of Soul won 3rd place double-block classic.
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Mirage, a Tribute to Jon DeCelles won 5th place single block classic.
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Bee Cool
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Planet Water by a biology colleague, Ina Timling together with her husband Ronald Daanen translates science about water resources into art.
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Finally the a portal similar to the one last year bid us farwell.
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[Bent Hjarbo]

Amazing 
Thanks for sharing.

[Nasos Kosmas]

Looks so different
Thank you Oivid

[PeterN]

Spectacular! Every time when I see an artist working on an ice or sand sculpture I am amazed by their skill.
You have beautifully captured their works of art.

[Fons Baerken]

Great series Øivind.

[pluton]

Amazing sculptures.  How long do they last?

[CS]

I always enjoy your images of the ice sculptures, Oivind!

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks for the kind words all of you. I am really happy to have the privilege to be able to share these with you.

Of course as usual the credit goes to these fantastic artists. Keep in mind that the temperatures during these competitions were mostly lingering between -40 and -25°C, which was also a technical challenge as ice gets quite brittle then. You might notice that the Bee-Cool sculpture had on of its wings broken off. It happened after it was finished possibly by snow dropping from the trees during a short warm-up or a snow fall. In another sculpture, a Pterodactylus (Momma's Nest) that I somehow did not get to capture, one wing broke off during its construction, and they did not dare to remove the temporary support columns for the other wing, that was still intact.

Here are a few more:

Judgement Day
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Motherhood
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Legend of Black Mamba won 4th place multiblock classic.
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Polar Attraction had really intense narrow wavelength blue LEDs on it that completely swamps the visual impression. Lessons learned from editing last year was to convert those to monochrome.
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Fair Warning
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In the Breeze
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Eternal Chase
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Finally On Pointe won 2nd place two block classic. Again this one created by local artist Heather Brice together with Junichi Nakamura.
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[Øivind Tøien]

Amazing sculptures.  How long do they last?

Keith, most of them are pretty well hidden from the sun in the forest (a criterion for selection of the site) so it is mostly depending on when it warms up to ambient temperatures above freezing. Last year we had an abrupt warm-up after I captured them in early March, and they were quickly mostly gone, although some might live on for a while in a transformed state of its own beauty. I did some IR captures of melting sculptures in 2012 but I belive those were only posted in the old forum. Here is the link on my site: https://otoien.zenfolio.com/p96518464/slideshow

So while we were mostly snow free and the sculptures all gone at end of March last year, there is hope they are going to last a lot longer this time.

[Thomas Stellwag]

 great pictures from this exhibition - thanks for sharing

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks for the kind comment Thomas.
 
After a very cold winter here, it looks like we have a break in the weather pattern now and the forecast for this week predicts multiple days with temperature above freezing.  So the sculptures might not last that long now.

[PeterN]

Thanks for taking the time to share more photos. I thoroughly enjoyed watched and can only repeat what I said in my earlier comment.

[armando_m]

Superb series

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks Peter and Armando,  happy to contribute some joy in these times.