The ice is flying at Saskatoon’s Winter Shines

Chisels and chainsaws aren’t something you’d expect to see at a winter festival, but they’re all part of the main attraction at Nutrien Winter Shines this year.

The annual festival taking place at the Saskatoon Farmer’s Market will feature plenty of work from Peter Fogarty tucked away in the snow park section.

Fogarty has been an ice sculptor for more than 30 years and says there’s always one thing that surprises people about the art form.

“Everybody thinks the colder it is, the happier the ice is,” he said while taking a break between sculpting his latest creation.

“Well, that’s not true because the ice becomes very, very brittle when the ice becomes cold.”

While Fogarty is happy to be part of the tenth year of Winter Shines, his company — Fire and Ice Creations — is celebrating its twentieth year of operations.

He still finds joy in sculpting massive creations, but not like the spectators of his exhibits usually do.

“It’s the ‘wow’ factor,” Fogarty said. “It’s the magical.”

Part of the exhibit during Winter Shines will be a bench to sit on that is adorned with different types of bees and a feature wall with different animals — like a gopher — for children to sit on.

There’s also a live component to it all as Fogarty and an accompanying sculptor will carve a grain elevator and a snowy owl to a live audience.

Saws, chainsaws, drills and chisels are just some of the tools you’ll need if you want to try your hand at ice sculpting.

There’s also items like the gary-gary board, which gets its name from the sound it makes as it shaves down ice.

“It’s like number zero grit sand paper,” he said with a chuckle. “The roughest sand paper on earth.”

Fogarty admits it wasn’t always that easy.

“I started before even power tools were used,” he said. “Quite a while ago I used all hand tools. They do provide the cleanest cutting of the ice, but maintaining them is a bit of a process.”

Fogarty calls the sculptures “one of the items that’s a living art form” as artists take a vat of water and eventually carve them into the massive sculptures people will see all week at Winter Shines.

“I’ve always referred to it similar to a diamond. You can pick up a clear rock and it looks like a rock, but the more that it’s cut, the more angles, the more that it reflects the light and the more sparkle and magic it has,” Fogarty said.

“That’s what ice does, it just catches the light and reflects.”

Nutrien Winter Shines runs until Feb. 3.