After finishing up these facial details I quit for the day. The following morning I re-did all of them….

It can be hard to honestly say that it simply isn't right, especially after I've already spent time on finishing details. True resemblance demands the scrutiny though and when I returned to this one after a night's sleep I knew for sure this malemute had the snout of a bear and the eyes of a boxer (the human kind, AFTER a fight). It could easily pass as a generic dog, but didn't look enough like THE dog I was making. Fortunately there was still room in the piece to find the final form I wanted, I just had to get over taking so many steps (and hours) back in time.

The snout was too short- so I pushed the eyes back about 3/4". The eyelids were too puffy- so I mellowed those out and made the eyebrows bunchier and closer to the nose bridge. The nose end was too round and the upper lips were too far forward- trim away. Not enough smile- so I extended the cheeks back and opened the lower jaw a bit more. Once the changes started happening I could tell I'd made the right choices and it was super fun to watch the dog I was looking for show up! The process is always so rewarding.

An illustration of the amount of elongation I achieved with the snout.

The left eye shows the new shape I was going for vs. the original on the right.

Re-doing the right eye to match the left. I’ll admit this photo kind of gives me the creeps…..

Ta-DAAA! Much better. :)

Our snow sculpture at the 2020 US National Championship competition collapsed just one hour before judging, thus disqualifying us from any judging results. It would’ve collapsed anyway. Read below for more.

Why spend so much time and effort on a piece of artwork that will soon disappear forever? It's a valid question, one that I've been regularly asked over my 15 years in the ephemeral arts. It's hard to respond with logic because the answer isn't necessarily reasonable. We're not being paid and plenty of people will never even see it before it's gone. In other words, the *tangible* rewards are scant.

We do this for reasons that touch on the very nature of existence and an acute celebration of the intangibles of life. It's so extremely FUN to make a sculpture of this scale in such a short amount of time. Sculpting in public makes this truly a performance art, and the appreciation from the audience of passers-by is both extremely satisfying and a core part of what this art form is all about.

And then there's the impermanence itself...the ultimate embodiment of the simple fact that nothing is forever. The only constant in the trajectory of our lives is change. Snow sculpture forces us to let go of all attachments to the final product. Fine details can disappear in days or even hours. The egoic desire for perpetual recognition and admiration is a non-issue due to the extremely short life span of the piece. These things cause a peculiar reaction within the artist: a much richer experience of the act of creating the work! I relish every moment of it. To summarize, we do this simply for the LOVE OF THE ART. This sculpture didn't survive long enough to compete, but was the experience for naught? Of course not! We still got to experience everything that makes doing this worthwhile, and 15 years of competitions have taught me that hanging one's happiness on judging results is asking for disappointment.