A crowd gathered in the first block of Pomfret Street in Carlisle Saturday to watch Tony Young wield a chainsaw with more precision than some people handle a butter knife.
It’s all in a day’s work for a man with about 30 years of experience in ice sculpting.
Kevin Gregory of Ice Concepts, who also has about 30 years of experience in the business, said the sculpture began with a 300-pound rectangular block of ice on which the design was sketched. The sculptor then roughs out the shape before using different tools to refine it into the finished product.
“We have a very good set up at the shop with everything we could possibly need at our fingertips. There’s a few more challenges to doing it live and so forth, but it’s what we do, so it’s second nature to us,” he said.
Gregory also took time to explain the process to those who were gathered in Carlisle. Most people don’t know about ice sculpting so it’s helpful to take some of the common questions about the business and answer them right off the bat, he said—questions about making a living from carving ice, what the market for custom ice sculptures is like or about the block of ice itself.