Loveland Art for All Ages

Loveland, Colorado is known for sculpture. We have several bronze foundries here, 2 sculpture parks, and scads of sculptors live here...and hundreds more travel here every year for our big summer sculpture shows.

Bronze sculpture is the most common...and what many people think of when they think sculpture...and we have some gorgeous examples of bronze sculpture in town. Of course, sculptures can be made out of other metals as well...

Stone sculpture is a personal favorite of mine and probably the other image that people come up with when they hear the word "sculpture"...perhaps it is visions of Michelangelo's David that come to mind. Here we have an entire park dedicated to stone sculpture from Zimbabwe.

Well, the Bronze and Stone Ages are not the only epochs covered (art-wise) in Loveland! We also have a market on the Ice Age! And it isn't just because we got 8 inches of snow recently.

Have you ever seen an ice sculpture? I'm not talking about the snow sculptures, like they have in Breckenridge...those are beautiful, but this is a different art form.

Ice sculptures are often created for restaurants...I remember seeing my first ice sculptures when I was a kid...the Sunday buffet always had a beautiful work of art. I remember thinking it was really cool (no pun intended) but not really giving any thought as to how it was created.

But where does that beautiful, clear ice come from?

Is there a giant freezer somewhere with great big ice cube trays?

As it turns out, Loveland, Colorado is the place where the technology was developed that creates the crystal-clear blocks of ice. This was way back and the company is still here and sells equipment around the world.

Instead of working from one massive ice cube, the ice sculptor works with blocks that are joined together with water and cold. In this case the blocks are about 20 inches x 40 inches and are about 10 inches thick. These blocks take about 4 days to freeze!

In Loveland, these artist's blocks are created every day and travel across the country. The key to getting the ice crystal-clear? Keep the water moving as it is freezing and remove any impurities as it freezes.

Ice sculpture is like stone carving in that it is a subtractive process. In this case the sculptor uses a chain saw, drills and other specialized tools. Many sculptors create these temporary works of art completely free hand, but others are created with special molds. Routers, lathes, and other machines associated with woodworking have been created to handle the frozen medium as well.

One of the things that makes ice sculpture so unique is, of course, the transparent nature of the medium and that you can freeze things inside it. The other big difference is that the work is temperature sensitive and so, unlike a work of bronze or stone which will last for centuries, this masterpiece may last a few days or even just a few hours.

If you want more information about ice for ice sculpture, and to see some examples of what can be done with it, check out Loveland's own ice sculpture shop!

Read about a recent ice sculpture created here in Loveland by Chef and carver Michael Pizzuto