Royal Purple

Issue date: 2/13/08 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: Joy Kowald Juniors Katie Axelsen, Kayla Chadwick and Ashley Dahle of the Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority carve hearts surrounding the letters UWW at Freeze Fest Feb. 9.

At 10 a.m. on the Cravath lakefront, where this year's Freeze Fest took place, three teams decided to expend body and mind to try their hands at carving ice in a demo dubbed "Ice Carving 101."

Starting from the left side of the ice carving demo, the first team, who carved a very enthusiastic looking snowman, consisted of Nancy Stanford and Debbie Hilgen. They are residents of Whitewater and participated in the ice carving demo last year.

"It's not everyday you get to do something like this," Stanford said.

Three members of the Sigma Sigma Sigma (or Tri-Sigma) sorority, junior Katie Axelsen, senior Ashley Dahle, and junior Kayla Chadwick made up the second team. They called themselves the Ice Divas and carved the letters UWW on top of one another with hearts surrounding them.

"It's so much fun, and we just love to get involved in the community," Chadwick said.

The third and final team, consisting of members from the Delta Zeta sorority, carved their sorority letters stacked on top of each other. The group members were senior Kate Kennedy, junior Rachel Orlopp, senior Nicole Douglas, junior Ashley Shain, and sophomore Janine Drobena.

"It's a lot easier and so much more fun than we thought," Drobena said.

Although there were no awards involved, every team carved with great amounts of vigor and energy.

To begin the ice carving process, each team designed their statue on sheets of graph paper within Whitewater's municipal building. Then, with the help of ice sculpting designer Greg Riley, each team transferred their designs onto larger sheets of paper, roughly the size of the block of ice.

After the designing process, each team then took their template down to the lakefront, where it would be frozen to the ice by professional ice sculptor Rob Storm.

Next, Storm took out his chainsaw and roughly cut each block of ice to get rid of the bigger chunks, allowing the teams to carve their statues more easily. Lastly, the teams detailed their sculptures, which took the most time, thought and energy.

"The carving and picking must be done at shallow angles because the ice cracks so easily," Storm said

Each team was given a block of ice 20 inches wide, 40 inches tall and roughly 15 inches deep. According to city of Whitewater Program Coordinator Michelle Dujardin, it took four months to organize this year's Freeze Fest.

"A lot of times when we produce events like this, we're part of a destination marketing effort that's put on by a city," Wagner said. "But here, the city of Whitewater is simply trying to raise money for a cause and get people involved within the community."

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