Snow sculptor dreams of Styrofoam

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This article was published 19/02/2007 (6852 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MIGUEL JOYAL was thinking Styrofoam.

It was almost the end of a long, brutally cold day, the latest in a frozen march of them for Joyal. Under many layers of clothing and behind a moustache walrused with icicles, Joyal was contemplating — well, he was contemplating a bison’s nose, a gigantic one, close up.

But he really was thinking of how much better it would be to be sculpting in Styrofoam than standing on a street corner in Winnipeg carving a statue in snow when the temperature was -20 C.

“I did a Styrofoam polar bear, life-size. And people think it’s snow,” Joyal said, pausing to appraise his latest strokes.

“So I could do it all summer and all spring, and it doesn’t matter, it won’t melt,” mused Joyal, one of Manitoba’s best-known artists, who has been working for more than 25 years. “Then the first little snowfall — bang, it’s up. People will say, ‘Boy, does he work fast, this guy.’ ”

Of course, that would not be quite in the spirit of snow sculpting, which is a good industry for artists such as Joyal in Winnipeg during the annual winter Festival du Voyageur, which ended Sunday.

But one could be humbuggy about spirit when the wind chill reaches -30 C.

Joyal, 48, did seven snow statues this year for the festival.

By the time the festival finished, he had worked pretty much five weeks straight, every day. In the cold. Global warming be damned, this has been a cold winter on the prairies. One of the coldest he remembers, and Joyal has been carving snow sculptures for the festival for 22 years.

He’s a professional artist, with an accomplished repertoire. His bronze Louis Riel, the father of Manitoba, stands behind the Legislative Building. He’s done wood chieftains and Madonnas, stone figurine rear ends and eagle heads, and glorious snow pieces.

His works are commissioned. “I don’t do this for nothing. You think I’m crazy?”

How much is he paid? “Not enough,” he says. “I wish I got paid like a lawyer.”

But his price “is going to double pretty soon,” he said. “I decided I’m getting too old for this.”

“This” includes a giant Cindy Klassen skating through a herd of giant bison. Klassen, the native Winnipeg speed skater who won five medals in the 2006 Winter Olympics, adorns the 15-foot-high sculpture because she is sponsored by Manitoba Telecom Services. The bison are there because they are part of the company’s logo. And Joyal is carving them all because MTS paid for the sculpture.

“I spent two days on the head,” he says. “It’s a portrait of someone, and I had to get it right. I set up a scaffold, and got comfortable, and did my thing.

“I had two, three pictures of her. I look at them back and forth, back and forth. You’ve got to determine the profile of the face. Once you have the profile, you can start taking off the sides. Placing the glasses was another tricky thing. There’s a lot of thinking going on to line everything up.”

The sculpture sits in a centre island of one of the busiest intersections in the city. He insisted on the spot because of its prominence.

“This is my art gallery. When I’m in my studio, I’m all alone,” he said. “Here, people drive by and shout out, ‘Great!’ They talk. One guy came and offered me a brandy. I said, ‘After the day is done.’ I don’t want to be up on ladders after having a brandy.”

— The Washington Post