A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
Snow artist Tim Young Sr. and County Seat manager Joel Soukkala have a unique artistic collaboration, as the theater trades advertising inside its playbill for advertising outside the theater. Young is planning to scrape off his current sculpture and craft a new one for the theater's next show.
Snow sculptor Tim Young Sr. shares some of the tools of his trade, including a sheetrock saw, a piece of lathe (one of his favorites) and horse grooming tools. Check out the Pine Knot News Facebook page for a video of Young explaining how he makes magic with the snow.
It's a good year to be a snow sculptor in Minnesota.
Tim Young Sr. is proof of that, as the Cloquet resident has been busy making art out of massive piles of snow for a couple months now.
His most recent project was basically a 3D snow billboard, advertising the County Seat Theater's opening show, "The Great Nursing Home Escape."
Every single character is represented on the sculpture, which is block-shaped with painted cartoonish figures emerging in relief from the front and sides.
Young said he watched several play
rehearsals before he started working on his blank block of snow. The ideas just came to him after he got to know the characters. It took about six weeks from start to finish, with 3-4 hours spent carving and painting each character.
"He was developing it throughout the run of the show, which was kind of fun," said County Seat general manager and show director Joel Soukkala. "The actors got to watch their characters pop out of the snow."
On the opening weekend of the play, the busy artist had carvings at the
snowmobile rally in Mahtowa, Winterfest in Carlton and in Duluth's Canal Park.
It's the second year Young and Soukkala have worked together to create some outdoor art at the theater - last year Young carved a giant bigmouth bass with a lure in its mouth for the theater's "Farce of Habit" play.
Young offered to sell his sculpture."It's not worth much after it's all melted," he said with a chuckle. It's best not to get too attached to one of Young's sculptures: between the sunshine melting the snow and snowstorms covering up the sculpture, his work is transitory. He does sell photographs of some of his sculptures, however.
Also, if you missed the "Great Escape" sculpture, don't fret.
Act II is coming.
"If weather cooperates and the timing is right, he's going to just scrape it off and do another one for the next show," Soukkala said.
Young said his snowy "billboard" is 7-feet deep, giving him plenty of white stuff to work with. He also hinted at future plans for a truly presidential sculpture outside his home on Freeman Road in the future.
Weather permitting, of course.
