March 30, 2005
Ice sculpture makes the cut
Traverse City resident takes second place at World Ice Art Championships in Alaska
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
With Northern Lights shimmering overhead and snow and ice crackling at his feet, Steve Berkshire transformed a 9,000-pound block of ice.
Berkshire and Mark Johnson from Wonder Lake, Ill., worked for 61 hours to create their sculpture, which won second place at the World Ice Art Championships held March 3-5 in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Competing against 46 other two-person teams, Berkshire and Johnson used chain saws, different types of chisels - all sharpened to surgical precision by Berkshire - plus their own ingenuity to chip, shave and remove ice.
The resulting sculpture, titled "The Legend," was the product of 12 weeks of planning before even stepping onto Alaskan soil. The free-form event was open to any theme, but this team wanted to honor the native Inuit culture of the area. The piece, carved from arctic blue diamond glacier ice, depicts an Inuit hunter in a kayak battling for his life against a 13.5-foot long shark.
"The father goes out into the ocean in the middle of this great storm in winter, he's surrounded by sharks and has no fear," Berkshire said.
The sculpture includes 75 fushions, including each of the shark's snarling teeth. Every cut on the piece was made with exacting precision, most planned in advance and some modified to adapt to their ice block's strengths or weaknesses.
"Some wild dental work went into that," said the Traverse City native and resident.
After completion, "The Legend" and all the other carvings will stand in a frozen outdoor gallery for up to 12 weeks.
"I think we hit the nail on the head, it was a very close competition," he said of their second place finish. "Judging is a very difficult job, they judge the sculptures in white light at night and judge all night long."
The duration of an ice sculpting competitions and the extreme weather conditions require an artist to move into a creative space that shuts out discomfort and distractions. In part, the collective creative energy of all the artists and the unique setting helps him recharge when energy runs now, Berkshire noted.
"You definitely have to go into the zone and once you're in the zone, time goes by and you're like, 'Oh, the day is done?'" he recalled. "You get to choose when you eat and sleep but each day you sleep less because you're competing."
"Really, it is about being able to communicate passion and expression, deep-rooted expression, and put the passion for that into a piece that really moves the viewer," Berkshire noted.
A certified food and beverage executive with Aramark Corporation, Berkshire has been sculpting for 20 years, competing internationally for the last 11. The largest work he has carved so far weighed 25 tons and was 25 feet tall. He has competed both solo and with one or more partners in the larger multi-block competitions.
Berkshire relishes working and competing with ice sculptors from other countries. Having already carved competitively in the United States, Canada, Germany and Holland, his sights are set on an event in China this year and one in Japan next year.
"My goal is to do more international competitions and multicultural events for the rest of my life, to do one or two a year," Berkshire said.
A 1991 graduate of Northwestern Michigan College's Culinary Arts program, Berkshire also carves wood and clay. As a youth, he was an avid model builder, crafting planes, cars, boats and buildings. He is now eyeing stone as his next medium and has an agreement with a noted stone sculptor from British Columbia to swap training.
"Stone is a slower approach and has different things about it," he noted.
Having competed and placed in ice carving competitions around the world, there is nothing like the pulse and pace of these events - he terms them magical times.
"It's 3 o'clock in the morning when you're working, 20 below zero, you can hear the crunch of the snow as an animal walks by," Berkshire said. "You're listening, off in the distance you can hear that some other sculptor from some other part of the world is in the forest with you, sculpting something and sharing passion."