Frequently Asked Questions About Ice Sculptures

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What are the most frequently asked questions about ice sculptures? Surely, we’ve missed one or two (or 10!), but here are some of the more common.

By the way, I (Dawson List) am the one answering these questions. I’ve been an ice sculptor for decades now and I’ve sculpted ice all over the world. I would definitely be considered an expert on the topic.

AI, on the other hand, while it’s quickly getting smarter, is still often wrong when it comes to ice sculpting. I guess it’s not a big priority yet 😜 So if it matters, make sure you get your answers from someone who knows what they’re talking about 🙂

how long do ice sculptures last?

This is definitely one of the most frequently asked questions about ice sculptures. Usually, the number we spit out when we hear this question is 4-6 hours. However, this REALLY depends on the sculpture, as well as where we set it up.

Bad conditions (sunlight, rain, high humidity, strong airflow, very high temperatures) can dramatically affect the life of an ice sculpture. We do try to compensate for this by finding out in advance where the ice will be set up. Once we know, we’ll design and sculpt accordingly. Sometimes, however, there’s no way to compensate. That’s when we warn you that it’s not going to last very long and suggest that maybe you should put it somewhere else!

HOWEVER, we also do something special that few other ice sculptors do. Because New Orleans and the rest of the region are frequently hot and humid, we often put sculpture details INSIDE the sculpture! That can make a difference of HOURS in how long the sculpture lasts and while we don’t do it for every sculpture, it is a technique that we routinely use. It’s definitely something that sets us apart from other ice sculpture companies!

to show you just how long an ice sculpture can actually last, we’ve added a video from our sister educational site, ice sculpting secrets that’s a time lapse of an ice luge melting, start to finish! It was an extra ice sculpture that we screwed up 😬

(Don’t worry, we made another for the Westin and they loved it!)

@icesculptingsecrets Melting ice luge time lapse: ice lasts a long time! . . #icesculpture #iceluge #melting #timelapse #neworleans #newyearseve #icesculptingsecrets ♬ Black Lambo (Instrumental) - The808Wizrd

how much does an ice sculpture cost? 💰

If you have to ask, you can’t afford one 😜

Ok, not really! And OF COURSE this is one of the most frequently asked questions about ice sculptures. But our site doesn’t have pricing because there are so many variables. For example, we rarely make the same sculptures over and over. Every event is different and we try to reflect that in our ice sculptures; we actually pride ourselves in trying to make each ice sculpture unique. Sometimes, of course, we’re just worn out and will make the same thing as before. But not usually!

Also, where we’re to deliver the sculpture(s) and our availability also affect pricing, sometimes a lot! We cover a large region since there aren’t many quality ice sculptors on the Gulf Coast. And to make things as simple as possible, we usually include delivery and set up in our pricing.

When we’re already super busy, IF we can create the sculpture, it can cost us more to get a sculpture made and delivered. Reasons for that might be have to hire help for set ups or that we can quite literally run out of the special ice that we use. If that happens, we have to go get more elsewhere, which adds costs. Which is why you should book as soon as you’re sure you want a sculpture! But the general guideline we give is that sculptures usually run between $500 and $1500, when all is said and done. However, if it’s larger than a standard size sculpture (like ice bars, etc.), that doesn’t count.

what is the point of ice sculptures?

Yeah, I know: what’s the point of a beautiful ice sculpture that’s just going to melt away in a few hours? But then you could ask the same question about any ephemeral art: live music, dance, a play, the list goes on…

In most cases, we custom tailor our ice sculptures for special events that only last a few hours, but also for special moments that you might remember for the rest of your life. Honestly, the point of an ice sculpture is often the impression that it makes. When one of your guests sees an ice sculpture for the first time, they’re often amazed that someone could make something so visually stunning from just frozen water! Oh, and sometimes, an ice sculpture will cool down your food or drink too, so it’s win-win 😉

where can I get the molds that you use for your sculptures?

You can’t. Not because we’re jerks and won’t tell you, but because we never use molds. (Well, almost never. We make some centerpieces and some bowls from molds. They’re the exceptions.) But we carve 99+% of our sculptures from giant 300 lb. blocks of clear ice (and sometimes much larger blocks!) The reason for that is that molded sculptures rarely (as in never?) freeze completely clear. There also aren’t many options because there aren’t many molds. And we customize most of our ice sculptures anyway, making molds useless.

how long does it take to make an ice sculpture?

We usually say “10 minutes to 10 hours!” And that’s pretty much true, since it depends a lot on the ice sculpture.

In speed ice sculpting competitions, an ice sculptor can quite literally have only 10 minutes to create a sculpture. And if the sculptor is good, you’ll be pretty impressed with what they can sculpt in 10 minutes from a big block of ice!

To make a complicated sculpture though, an ice sculptor might spend hours in the freezer working on it. Maybe 10 hours or more! But that’s not the norm. If we had to commit to an average time to make a typical ice sculpture, 2 hours would be a good bet.

Now at world class ice sculpture competitions, like in Fairbanks, Alaska, sculptors might work for days on larger sculptures. And it wouldn’t be too crazy to work for more than a week on a really special ice sculpture. So maybe we should change how we answer this question to “10 minutes to 10 days.” 🤔

how do you keep the ice sculpture cold?

Once it’s at the event, usually, we don’t. Ice sculptures are so much larger than than the ice that most people are used to dealing with every day, ice cubes. It actually takes a lot of heat energy to melt ice. And so a large ice sculpture will last a long time, especially if it’s not that warm where it’s at. It’s not unusual for an ice sculpture to take more than a day to melt away completely, even in New Orleans!

This really is one of the more frequently asked questions about ice sculptures. I think that when people ask this, they think that somehow the display tray is cooling the ice sculpture so that it will last longer. However, heat goes up and cold goes down, so cooling an ice sculpture from the bottom would be less than effective.

can you make color ice sculptures?

YES!…and no 😬

This is definitely one of the frequently asked questions about ice sculptures, but the answer is complicated. So read on…

If you’ve been to the Moody Gardens Ice Land or seen the one of the big ICE! displays at the Gaylord properties, you’ve seen a lot of color ice sculptures. In the giant freezers that house the displays, using color ice is great, because it doesn’t melt. If those sculptures did melt in real time though, they would make a very colorful mess! So we don’t use color ice blocks to make our sculptures. We use big, super clear ice blocks. (See the pic in a later answer down below.)

HOWEVER, we CAN add color to your ice sculpture. We usually do it with color sand, but sometimes we use other ways, including color paper or even biodegradable glitter. And because we engrave our sculptures using a super precise CNC machine, we can replicate complex color logos in our ice sculptures.

ALSO, we can color ice sculptures with light. In most cases, we might shine one or two colors at a sculpture and you’ll find a few examples of this if you peruse our ice sculpture galleries. Once in a long while though, we go super crazy and light an ice sculpture like below. Believe it or not, that’s just ice and light 😮

do you use a chainsaw? 😱

Yes, we do! With many sculptures, we start with a chainsaw and then use a progression of smaller power tools and chisels to shape and add more details to the sculpture. Gas chainsaws are a no-no in the freezers, so we mostly use much lighter electric chainsaws, usually the plug-in kind. In theory, we’d make lousy movie-style killers: we’d yank the cord out of the wall or trip over it once we started chasing you 😱 So you’re probably pretty safe from that. Although…in the last few years, battery chainsaws have gotten a lot better…so watch out! 😱😱

is that ice?

Believe it or not, this is one of the most frequently asked questions about ice sculptures. And that’s one way that we know we’ve done a good job. Because they’re having a hard time believing that the sculpture before them is just frozen water! Usually, that’s when they decide to touch it to make sure 🙂

how do they make ice sculptures clear?

To make our ice sculptures clear, we use big 300 lb. blocks of specially made ice. While most of the blocks we make ourselves, others we buy from a super secret source (not really a secret). But the machines that make these ice blocks use a special freezing process so that it eliminates almost all the cloudiness that you see in regular man-made ice. Unfortunately, you can’t easily just make giant blocks of clear ice at home. (I used to think you could, way back when!)

one of the more frequently asked questions about ice sculptures is “how come the ice is so clear?” First, you have to start with the clearest blocks of ice! (Some blocks are even BETTER than this one!)

what kind of table is the best for displaying an ice sculpture?

We go more into this on another page, but the quick answer is a standard 6 or 8 foot banquet table (rectangular) with a tablecloth and skirt. That’s because it provides the stability an ice sculpture needs and it works best for draining the meltwater from the sculpture tray. Also though, we get that this won’t work every time. So there are ways to handle most set ups. But we’ve found that kind of table set up works the best for most ice sculptures.

for more frequently asked questions about ice sculptures…

Got more questions? Check out this entry on one of our sister sites about more frequently asked questions about ice sculptures. SO many questions! 😆