Meet the artist taking his snow and ice sculptures in northwestern Ontario to the next level | 24CA News

Kim Asmussen is the Snow King of Schreiber. 

The retired faculty principal has been profiting from the northern Ontario winter by turning snow and ice into artwork for the previous 4 years with ice sculptures and snowshoe artwork — large-scale patterns on fields and frozen lakes manufactured from snowshoe tracks that may solely be seen from the sky. 

24CA News featured Asmussen’s snowshoe artwork a few years in the past. Since then, he is continued to broaden his presence, capturing his designs by drone images and sharing them on social media. But it has been a sluggish begin this yr as a result of an absence of snow.

But he has been in a position to do a couple of items, like a snowflake and a nativity scene. The latter piece gained a number of traction on-line with 1000’s of likes, feedback and shares.

“It just keeps you thinking, keeps your creativity going, and the nice thing about it is I try to get people out to help as much as possible,” he mentioned.

The ideas take a number of planning, however they arrive collectively pretty rapidly when he is obtained a group to work with, he mentioned. 

“It’s sort of a social thing for people to come out and help, too, and it’s really interesting the first time someone does come out and they don’t really have a visual of what we’ve done,” Asmussen mentioned. 

“It’s just fascinating, just to hear the responses of the people who have helped when they see it for the first time.”

For a couple of years now, Asmussen has wished to convey a snowshoe artwork pageant to the realm. The downside, although, is that they are topic to Mother Nature’s whims. It is tough to plan forward of time when he cannot predict how a lot snow will likely be out there to work with. And if it is a cloudy day, the designs are onerous to see.

So, whereas he waits for extra snow to fall, he is been specializing in his different medium: ice.

Asmussen makes use of metallic kinds to make the ice molds. To make them clear, he makes use of pumps to flow into water by them. Any impurities keep within the circulated water and the clear water freezes from the underside up. Once it’s thick sufficient, he cuts the pumps out so they do not freeze inside it.

From there, he begins to form the ice blocks, utilizing instruments like chainsaws, a carving blade and grinders. He heats up irons on a metallic plate and makes use of these to easy out the ice and fuse items collectively. Chisels are used for the high-quality particulars. From a distance, he makes use of a torch to take away the frost from the surface of the ice, so folks can see by it. As lengthy because the solar does not get to it, the ice stays clear. 

This yr, Asmussen is engaged on a “Schreiber’s Sidewalk Sculptures” mission. It began with a bit known as “Sitting Santa,” a life-sized duplicate of Old Saint Nick. He had hoped to have it carried out by Christmas, however the vacation blizzard foiled his plans.

Asmussen’s purpose is to make an ice sculpture each week, weather-permitting, by the winter, and illuminate them from beneath at night time in order that they type a shimmering path.

“If we get a good freeze on Lake Superior, we’re going to be able to get some blocks off of Lake Superior, which are crystal clear blocks, too, and then from there we’ll have a major ice sculpting festival … we hope,” he mentioned.

However, there are not any ensures within the ice sculpting recreation, because the climate should co-operate.

Sitting Santa’s been an enormous hit to this point. Some of his favorite sculptures through the years embrace a soldier on the Schreiber Cenotaph Park, an enormous loonie and an enormous, pleasant fish. The subsequent piece within the works is a big diamond ring match for an ice queen.

“It gives the people in town a lot of pride that we’ve got something like that going on in Schreiber. So, it makes people feel good, which makes me feel good,” mentioned Asmussen. “That’s probably the greatest motivation – it’s just the joy that people are getting from it.”

For anybody trying to make winter artwork, Asmussen encourages them to begin small and be progressive with the instruments at their disposal. 

His newest initiatives might be seen on his private Facebook profile below the title Kim Asmussen.