International Sculptors Carve Giant US Ice Exhibit

ICE! is a 15,000-square-foot (1,394 square meters) interactive exhibit carved entirely of ice and housed under a massive canopy with thick foam walls to insulate the frosty interior at the Gaylord National Resort in the US state of Maryland. The annual exhibit is part of the resort’s Christmas on the Potomac, and opens on Nov. 16.

The exhibit begins with 5,000 blocks of ice, each weighing nearly 400 pounds (181 kilograms), which are shipped in from a plant in the state of Ohio.

The 2012 theme is Shrek the Halls, named for the cartoon movie series featuring a popular green ogre named Shrek. The exhibit uses three different kinds of ice: clear ice, made from filtered water and frozen over a three-day period; “snow” ice, frozen quickly to get a solid white color; and colored ice, which has food-safe pigmented dyes added to achieve ten specific colors.

The blocks arrive in mid-October. A team of artists work seven days a week to stack the blocks, then chisel, cut and carve them, slowly transforming them into characters like Donkey, Shrek’s constant sidekick.

One of most popular features is a set of two-story slides, illuminated internally by specially-designed tube lights. Grownups and children can both climb the ice stairwell and slide to the bottom.

The story follows Shrek as he attempts to celebrate his first Christmas with Princess Fiona, and needs help from friends like Pinocchio. In all, it takes 2 million pounds (907,185 kilograms) of ice to tell the tale.

The dark pink dragon is 40 feet (12 meters) long, weighs almost 10,000 pounds (4,535 kilograms) and takes 26 blocks of ice to make.

A team of 40 master carvers are flown in from Harbin, China where the ice-carving tradition can be traced back hundreds of years to the time of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties around 1600.

Master carvers like 51-year-old Haijun Lin work ten hours a day for 30 days in a carefully-controlled environment of just 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 13 degrees Celsius) to complete the project on time. Too cold and the ice becomes brittle, too warm and it won’t chip properly.

The final display is an elaborate nativity scene, something the company – headquartered in the state of Tennessee – feels is an important way to tell visitors about the meaning of the Christmas season.