Written by Will Grunwald
Photographed by Michael D. Wilson
From our January 2022 release
Our Lady of Victories, a 14-foot-tall bronze statue of the Greek goddess Nike, was placed atop a granite plinth in Portland’s Memorial Square more than a century ago, to commemorate the thousands of townspeople who died fighting in the Civil War. Sword and shield in hand, she keeps a steady eye on the bustling plaza, where Jay Block has recently set out to carve another legendary figure, the phoenix rising from the ashes, a symbol of the city since a series of devastating fires in the 18th century. and 1800. However, Bluck’s medium is less durable than bronze.
Bluck started with a 250-pound block of ice, and when he used the saw to roughen his design, the snow and ice bits piled up, then pooled at his feet. A jazz band played nearby, and Eddie the Yeti and Betty the Yeti, the furry mascot from the Sunday River Ski Resort, waved to passersby—the ice sculpting show was part of a promotion for Middle Eastern Carnival, the upcoming winter show at Portland’s Eastern Promenade. Soon after, Bluck replaced his chainsaw with die grinders with various attachments for shaping, sanding, and other finer touches. “There is a whole subculture of ice sculpting,” he says. “We use some specially designed parts that only work on ice – they’re not good for anything else.”
Within Maine, Bluck is essentially one subculture. Aside from his Topsham-based SubZero Ice Carvings, he knows of no other ice sculpting business in the state, and has no shortage of requests for sculptures for weddings, corporate conferences, and festivals. It also builds ice bars, usually for restaurants and hotels. Last winter, with most public events canceled due to the pandemic, he received more orders for backyard ice rails, which he would customize in any way, from size to lighting to carvings to logos to overall design. “We made a moose ice block once,” he notes. “The drink was a moose head. It looks like the body was under water and the top of the bar was the surface of the water, so the moose head was going off.”
Bluck got into the art of ice sculpting over a decade ago, when he was a chef at a Falmouth country club. “I started to learn sculptural decorations and other techniques like that,” he says. “I was browsing the internet and buying rare books from Japan about vegetable decorating and things like that. Ice carving is basically a culinary art too, and it’s always been kind of an interest.” He trained on the side in a Maine ice-sculpting outfit, and when the owner walked away, Bluck decided to hang his own shingle board. “At first, I was probably painting six sculptures a year,” he says. “Now, when he’s busy, I’ll work 15 a week. Once the temperature starts to drop, people get brain ice.”
After an hour and a half in Monument Square, Bluck tricked another fluffy, flame-licking curlicue of his phoenix and retreated to take in his handiwork. Then he took off his heavy winter gloves and wrung them, and a torrent of water splashed on the floor. “My hands completely wrinkle, as if they’ve been in the pool all day,” he says. The day was unusually warm, and the statue was sweating. Unless one of the Bluck’s pieces is kept out of the sun and at temperatures below freezing, they begin to shrink before they are done. “Do I have feelings or emotions about it? Am I sad? No, not really.” “Expecting an ice statue to melt is kind of what makes it what it is.”
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