Enchanted Forest 2019 at the City of Lakes Luminary Loppet

When possible, I love to donate my time and expertise to the City of Lakes Loppet by placing at least one ice luminary sculpture in the Enchanted Forest. The photo above of the ice sculpture I installed for 2019 event was taken by the great Natasha D'Schommer. (I am always thrilled to see her arrive with her camera and daughter in tow. Thank you for posting this beautiful photo!) 

This year I was very excited to present a new technique I developed using bubble wrap as a texture on ice glass (Regular Ice Glass is a project in my book, Ice Luminary Magic). I installed the sculpture the night before to allow the below freezing temps to lock it into place. Just lit by the sunset, you can see the detail of the bubblewrap texture as it resembles honeycomb--I love it! 

Sadly, the sun and heat of the following day ravaged the fine detail of the texture in the ice. When I returned to light the candles and prepared to take pictures during the "blue hour" of twilight, I could easily see the difference. I was heart broken . . .

 . . . but as the sun continued to set, I was reminded of the reason I am addicted to ice luminary creation—all candlelit ice radiates beauty on a winter night. It's a constant.

Thank you to Martha Shull Archer for stopping by the Enchanted Forest with her camera. (Martha's has been capturing photos of my ice art from the beginning and her photos have been featured on Wintercraft packaging as well as in Ice Luminary Magic.)

A wonderful aspect of the Enchanted Forest is that many ice artists contribute their work to the space, creating a community ice lantern garden. Kathy Loeffler heads up organizing this effort and also makes a beautiful ice castle herself each year. I wasn't able to get a good picture of her castle this year so if anyone has one, please share! A bonus this year was that Kathy purchased a number of copies of Ice Luminary Magic specifically to give to some of the contributing artists. I love how every year there appears to be more and more interesting ice art in the Community Ice Lantern Garden. 

An artist currently unknown to me created a stunning sculpture using ice hands which made me immediately regret cutting the Ice Hands project from my book for space reasons. (Tom jokes that the book would have been 700 pages long if he had not starting to ruthlessly cut projects from the book. He was correct, as usual . . .) I hope the artist will contact me so I can add their name to this blog!

My friend and fellow ice artist, Mary Arneson presented her "ice windows" which is a clever combination of techniques from projects in my book—Appliqué (p 103), Open-bottom Ice Lantern (p 35) and Surround Ice Lantern (p 41). The high air temps softened the lines of the cut outs quite a bit, but she artfully arranged them in a way to keep the wind from blowing out her candles.

 And finally, the wonder in a child's face is the main reason most of us ice artists brave the cold to present our creative ideas to the world.

Enjoy the Glow!

-- Jennifer Shea Hedberg, The Ice Wrangler

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