otherworldly snow sculptures | strange glowing visitors in the night

Devin Devine, Poconos snow mason and ice sculptor
devin@devineescapes.com 610-301-4269

“You’re having fun!!”

True. Self expression makes the work fun, and the challenge keeps it fun. Both of these kept threatening to collapse as I built them. Also, just trying to make them sphere shaped with no guide. So there’s a bit of an urgency, because i has to be completed fast. The cold won’t last forever–but it can’t be completed too fast, because the lower portion must freeze solid before the upper portion can be built, or else the collapse happens.

Working at the peak of my abilities gets me in the zone, as they say. Into a pleasant mental space where I’m moving fast, in a State of Flow, getting work done in triple time.

You like my DOOTS better glowing, or not?

“how do you do what you do?”

My secret formula:

I visualize
then draw
then assemble materials and tools
and then I focus and work

Step 1 and 2 are vital. I read a timer frame/wood artist recently said “think thrice, measure twice, cut once”. I feel that. In the case of fun artistic temporary sculpture work like this there’s less measuring. It’s all about feel. Any measuring being done is just using hand width or arm’s length, things like that. But the Think Thrice part is so important. Often I’ll just star at a pile of rocks for an hour and then get cracking. Or sit with a drawing pad all afternoon.

Made with snow and beet powder for the red. Here she is with her original dreads, redder. These melted one day but the rest of the entity yet stood, so the next night I replaced them with larger ones.

In other news–I was featured in the news last week

colorful snow sculpture

They take me days, sometimes many days, of hard cold work to get them done but then they are gone, as soon as the sun says so.

“so sad to watch these snow sculptures melt”

I don’t know how to describe my feelings on this. When the weather forecast calls for warmer weather I always have the chance to reinforce these, to add a bit more snow to them and thicken them up, to get a couple extra days and nights out of them. But I never do. They’re like sand castles. The warm sun is meant to return and take them away.