Ice sculpting team carves its way to nationals
While growing up in east St. Paul, Jon Baller liked to draw but never dreamed that someday he'd be competing in a national ice sculpting competition. The longtime Stillwater resident and his team are the current Minnesota state snow sculpting champions. They will represent Minnesota in the U.S. National Snow Sculpting Championship in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Feb 2-6. Baller’s son Josh is a team member, along with Baller’s cousin Curtis Cook. Baller's interest in ice sculpting began 35 years ago when he saw an ad in the newspaper that said the St. Paul Winter Carnival was looking for ice sculptors for a snow sculpting competition. It was the first year the carnival held the competition.
“I thought it sounded fun, so I got a couple of guys I was going to school with and we made a team. We had no idea what we were doing and did a really bad sculpture (it was suppose to be a beach scene with a bunch of snow people laying on the beach and another snow man surfing) and ended up knocking the entire block down,” Baller laughed. “We didn't know there was going to be an ice block, and we knocked the block down and then we had to build it back up. That was way more work than it needed to be.” “We have done ice sculpting at the St. Paul Winter Carnival every year since then, and we are the only team that has done it every year,” he added. Throughout the years, Baller has coaxed his brothers, sisters
and friends into ice sculpting, and they also have competed in the carnival’s snow sculpting contest. “One year we had five teams in the competition,” he said. Baller and his team has also participated in the Aquatennial sand sculpting competition at Lake Nokomis. “Sand is a little different, because it doesn't stick together like snow does,” Baller said. “Everything sort of looks like a mound. We did a collage of the Aquatennial images and in the middle it had the downtown Minneapolis skyline.” Baller said he likes convoluted sculptures, and his favorite thing to sculpt is something different. “I just like creating sculptures that have many pieces to it.” “We did one called ‘Keurig Version .2’ where we made this
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