Earlier this month, the city of Pittsfield and the Barrington Stage Company hosts their 11th annual 10×10 Upstreet Arts Festival. This event encourages everyone to get outside and enjoy the arts, with events that include live music, dance, theater, and other fun activities.
At one of these events, visitors got a chance to see ice sculptors in action as they turned hunks of ice into multi-dimensional art pieces on the lawn of the Berkshire Museum.
Connecting Point’s Brian Sullivan dropped by to observe these unique artists as they applied chisels and chainsaws to six 300-pound blocks of ice.
Learn what tools sculptors use to turns blocks of ice into works of art in this digital exclusive.
Read the full transcript:
Zydalis Bauer, Connecting Point: The city of Pittsfield and the Barrington Stage Company recently hosted their 11th annual 10×10 Upstreet Arts Festival. This event encourages everyone to get outside and enjoy the arts, including live music, dance, theater, and a host of other fun activities.
And as part of the festivities on February 24th, just outside the Berkshire Museum, visitors got a chance to see some ice sculptors in action.
Connecting Point’s Brian Sullivan dropped by to observe these unique artists as they applied chisels and chainsaws to six 300 pound blocks of ice.
Brian Sullivan, Connecting Point: The only thing colder than the morning air of February 24th was the special delivery being made out in front of the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. The contents of that delivery arrived in six rectangular packages, weighing in at 300 pounds each.
But it doesn’t take long for these blocks of ice to shed much of that weight, as artist Robert Markey and Peter Vacchina take to carving away. First, engraving the outlines of the letters for this sculpture. Next, doing the big cuts with their chainsaws, and eventually fine-tuning the design with their chisels.
If it seems like they’ve done this before, it’s because they have.
Peter Vacchina, Artist: This is our fourth year here doing ice sculptures. Tonight’s the opening of the 10×10 here in Pittsfield. It happens in the museum, so we’re at a prime location for people to walk by, see what we’re doing, as well as visiting a museum.
Brian Sullivan: And that bit of social interaction can go a long way for two artists who, in their usual settings, don’t really come across too many human beings at all for hours on end.
But these aren’t just two random sculptors who were chosen to do this project. These are two friends, collaborating on a medium and feeding off each other’s artistic instincts.
Peter Vacchina: We met each other through art, and we’ve been friends for 20 years because we do taekwondo together.
Robert Markey, Artist: We met years ago and — and I figure was eight years ago, maybe in Greenfield, where I invited him to do an ice sculpture — he was starting to work on sculpture. And then, um, it was just three or four years ago here, where we were invited by Pittsfield to do a project together.
It’s been nice working with him and just going back and forth. It’s always nice to work with another artist and get their feedback and work together.
Brian Sullivan: As Markey and Vacchina continued to cut and chisel these ice blocks, the cold morning air became cold afternoon air with no real major uptick in temperature. And that’s been an attribute that’s kind of defined the winter of 2022. Not exactly the snowiest, but consistently cold.
The first day of spring is really just around the corner. But here in New England, most of the time it’s just another day on the calendar. The good news for the artists is, these ice sculptures will probably still be here by the time the vernal equinox rolls around.
That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but, with a pending snowfall and cold temperatures in the forecast, that prediction might not have been too far off the mark.
Peter Vacchina: We moved the date to this — today three times, to get to today, chasing the weather patterns. And if we get by the snowstorm tomorrow, it’s going to be cold for another week. So these’ll last for — at least another week, which is not what normally happens around in February when the weather changes.
So we’re going to be happy we’ll be seeing these for at least another week here.
Brian Sullivan: The same can be said for passersby, who seem to be fascinated as this tandem uses their power tools, hand tools, and artistic ingenuity to convert big blocks of frozen water into words and shapes.
Having their work of art remain visible for an extended period, even if it means prolonged cold temperatures, seems like a worthwhile trade off.
Robert Markey: It’s always good to feel like we’re doing something that gets appreciated. And, um, the — in the wintertime, you know what’s there to look at when you’re outside? So, we look at ice sculpture is something pretty special for people.
Peter Vacchina: One of the most interesting pieces to it, is that I think about what I’m going to do. We carve it, it looks great. And then if the weather changes, it’s gone.
