On Saturday, Feb. 8, five teams of sculptors swarmed around eight-foot-tall mounds of snow they’d cut, whittled and shaved into familiar and fantastical shapes for the Winter Arts Snow Sculpting Festival. The free, annual event invites teams of artists to transform 288 cubic feet of snow into frozen masterpieces.
Teams work for hours at a time in the bitter cold each year in Washington Park, located just across the street from the Dubuque Museum of Art.
Perched on a ladder, a member of team Driftless Snow Sculptors formed the snout of a Piasa Bird, a winged creature of Illiniwek mythology that was painted on the bluffs of the Mississippi River.
Madeleine Charis King
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Iowa Public Radio
A member of Driftless Snow Sculptors smooths the neck of his team’s snow sculpture, “Ascending Spirit.”
Several feet away, Scott Steder from UW Platteville Art showed a group of passersby the clay model his team was using to form their abominable snowman sculpture.
Madeleine Charis King
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Iowa Public Radio
Two clay yeti models serve as the inspiration for UW Platteville Art’s sculpture.
“My son is a big fan of abominable snowmen and yetis, and I’m always trying to win the ‘Dad of the Year’ award by making something large that he’s interested in,” the art professor said of the team’s sculpture choice.
The teams began with 6 ft. by 8 ft. blocks of snow that they had four days to form. The sculptures were then judged by professional artists and voted on by the community. The competition comes with a $1,000 prize for Best in Show, while $300 goes to the People’s Choice Award-winner.
Excess snow was piled into a heap across the street. But the blocks were the only snow to be seen in the otherwise brown and lifeless park. To a pedestrian walking past, the sight might be confusing, given no snow had fallen in Dubuque that week. So where did it all come from?
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Onlookers watch teams form their snow sculptures on Saturday, Feb. 8.
Madeleine Charis King / Iowa Public Radio
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Scott Stedar has been entering his team, comprised of his students from UW Platteville’s ceramics and art history departments, into Dubuque’s competition for seven years.
Madeleine Charis King / Iowa Public Radio
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Scott Steder has been entering his team, comprised of his students from UW Platteville’s ceramics and art history departments, into Dubuque’s competition for seven years. Though the team has never won, they’ve started making their own snow sculpting tools to improve their sculpture each year.
Madeleine Charis King / Iowa Public Radio
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Members of team Driftless Snow Sculptors form the top of their sculpture, “Ascending Spirit.”
Madeleine Charis King / Iowa Public Radio
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Teams worked in 30-degree weather on Feb. 8, putting in as many as eight hours at a time to finish their sculptures for the competition.
Madeleine Charis King / Iowa Public Radio
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Rachel, a member of Driftless Snow Sculptors, forms the snout of the team’s Piasa Bird, a Native American spirit significant to the history of the Mississippi River Valley.
Madeleine Charis King / Iowa Public Radio
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A member of UW Platteville Art carves out the beginnings of a mouth into the team’s yeti sculpture.
Madeleine Charis King / Iowa Public Radio
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Smaller versions of the snow blocks are placed for kids and visitors to make their own miniature snow sculptures on Sunday, the final day of the sculpting festival that invites the community out to celebrate.
Madeleine Charis King / Iowa Public Radio
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Snow sculptures are created near the sidewalk in Washington Park so passersby can stop to ask the sculptors questions while they work.
Madeleine Charis King / Iowa Public Radio
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Members of UW Platteville Art smooth the rounded sides of their yeti sculpture.
Madeleine Charis King / Iowa Public Radio
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“Creepy Creativity,” a snow sculpture of a haunted house created by team Dark Chambers, won the People’s Choice award with 507 votes.
Contributed / Winter Arts Snow Sculpting Festival
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Team Dark Chambers’ original sketch of their haunted house snow sculpture.
Contributed / Winter Arts Snow Sculpting Festival
The Dubuque Winter Arts Snow Sculpting Festival has been canceled before due to unseasonably warm weather, but even when there’s no fresh snow, the competition goes on. The abundance of the stuff is made possible through a partnership with the nearby Sundown Mountain Resort, which uses machines that mix air, water, and pressure to manufacture the vast majority of the snow that lines its slopes.
Team Snowmaggedon won Best in Show with their sculpture, “Birds Of A Feather,” while team Dark Chambers walked away with $300 for their haunted house sculpture, “Creepy Creativity.”
