“We definitely are happy with the results,” said Taylor Welch, vice president of City of Sculpture and the 2019 sponsorship chairman.
There were more sculptures than in 2017, but fewer major sponsors than the previous event.
“We’re at probably 80 percent of what we raised in 2017,” Welch said.
The event displayed 65 ice sculptures that companies, people or organizations sponsored, plus another 15 that were carved during the festival itself.
Those ice sculptures were made from 182 blocks of ice — each block measuring 40 inches tall, 20 inches wide and 10 inches deep, weighing 300 pounds before being carved.
“The Saturday of IceFest, it’s a minor miracle that I didn’t get frostbite,” said a chuckling Jacob Stone, chairman of the IceFest planning committee. “I was walking around in the rain all day, trying to preserve the sculptures as best as possible.”
Board members for City of Sculpture were both cold and wet, working to protect the sculptures from the rains, which would have accelerated their melting.
Friday evening attendance “was spectacular,” Stone said. “Friday, the sidewalk was literally jammed. There was probably 500-1,000 people in each block of downtown,” viewing the sculptures. “It was absolutely amazing, and I would guess we probably saw 10,000-15,000 on Friday alone.”
Saturday, there were “far fewer people, because of the weather,” he said. “We probably had 500-1,000 out through the day.”
A small but steady flow of people viewed the sculptures Saturday. Stone was pleased, though, that efforts to preserve the sculptures despite the rain made sculpture viewing possibly on Sunday and into Monday.
“That’s a silver lining, that we got an extra day and a half of viewing,” he said.
“Going into the weekend, we had already met the financial goal, or hopefully we have,” Welch said. “So even though the weather was not cooperating with us this year, the fundraising part is done before that weekend.”
The rain caused extra expenses, and because the event pays ice carvers to attend the event, and it’s not always evident until the event how many will ultimately attend until shortly before. About a week before the event, three additional carvers said they could make it. This year, 13 carvers worked at the event, more than in the past two IceFests, but not a record, Welch said.
City of Sculpture recently bought two sculptures that will be installed this spring, are repairing and cleaning an existing sculpture, and also paying for restoration of the historic fountain, “Hebe, Nymph of Streams and Brooks,” which was installed in a small park at the northwest corner of High Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard in 2013.
That fountain was badly damaged in October when a 1957 Buick crashed into it because of a mechanical failure.
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