Statesman

Issue date: 2/24/10 Section: Outdoors

Media Credit: Julie Krienke

Media Credit: Julie Krienke Assistant Professor of Photography Kristen Pless and Daniel Schutte of North Shore Community School work together to form an ice sculpture at Central Hillside Community Center.

On Saturday morning, a 9-foot ice sculpture was assembled at the Central Hillside Community Center on 4th Street and Lake Avenue in Duluth. In the shape of a waterfall, the sculpture holds significance to our duty as residents of the Duluth area and is currently located underneath a bridge outside of the community center.

The sculpture was designed and assembled by a trio of artists. Dan Neff, Kristen Pless, and Daniel Schutte were recruited by the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council, Duluth and Superior Arts District Development Committee, and Duluth Local Initiatives Support Corporation. The task was simply to construct a creative work of art.

All three individuals brought something unique to the table; Pless works at the University of Minnesota-Duluth as an assistant professor of photography; Neff's undergraduate study in Outdoor Education has helped create his interest in glassblowing; Schutte has experience in carpentry, and he works at the North Shore Community School teaching environmental education.

The ice sculpture holds a different meaning for each of the artists, and they explained that they all learned a lot by constructing this work.

The message that the artists wished to convey through their sculpture was that we all need to be aware of the amount of litter we contaminate our city with. They believe that as residents of the City of Duluth, it is our duty to maintain the beauty and individuality of this magnificent city and the resources that we have in the area.

The water used to construct this ice sculpture came directly from Lake Superior. The group members collected ice chunks from Canal Park and stored them at their homes until Saturday when they assembled the sculpture.

They spent a long afternoon at Lake Superior loading up four full truckloads of ice blocks.

The uniqueness of this sculpture comes from what is in the slabs of ice. The group froze garbage that they collected on 4th Street into the ice, which took three to four days. Among the items frozen into the ice were empty pop bottles, chip bags and even a belt and baseball cap.

Pless explained that it only took the group about a half-hour to find all of this trash. "I was absolutely shocked," Pless said.

Each of the three artists expressed their hope that the sculpture changes how people look at public spaces. "We really want people to keep in mind where their waste is going," Pless said.

For this reason, the group decided to place the sculpture on the hillside at the community center. By doing this, they hope to show the public that their garbage is flowing right down into the lake. The sculpture has also been placed in a park, not a building, for an important reason.

The artists want to illustrate that it is the environment that we are affecting by pollution, and it is places like public parks and the lake itself that are being damaged the most by our trash.

The group's goals are to highlight the importance of the arts in the Duluth community, emphasize the importance of a healthy community and encourage people to sustain the area that they live in by not polluting. They hope that the sculpture changes the way people think about the amount of contamination in the area of Duluth.

They stacked the slabs of ice from Lake Superior on top of one another to form a waterfall. Neff employed his glassblowing abilities by using a blowtorch to form the pieces together. They hope to make the sculpture glossier by smoothing down the ice.

The public is invited to come see the completed sculpture and celebrate the beauty of Lake Superior. The work will be up until March 8. Anyone who wants to can come and pour cold water on the sculpture to help solidify it during the next two weeks.

So take an afternoon and go check out this unique sculpture. As you add water to the piece, think about the vast amounts of resources that we have been given here in the Duluth area, keeping in mind that we all need to do our part in maintaining the environment.

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