Icy astronaut carries warm message

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This article was published 20/01/2022 (1717 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A St. Vital dad hopes people who stop to admire his spaceman snow sculpture are inspired in the name of love.

Bradley Gerbrandt, a graphic designer, has been making snow sculptures in his southeast Winnipeg yard for the last five years. He works alone, using simple molds, and says it’s been a learning process over those years, but a “total joy” as well.

“I’ve got a family here, too — my wife is nice enough to let me get out and escape the family sometimes and do some carving,” Gerbrandt joked Monday.

His inspiration varies — last year, one of his sculptures was a large-scale replica of young daughter Sophie’s toy bear — but this year, the artistic vision went beyond the physical realm.

The sculpture at 20 Elm Park Rd., which depicts a sitting spaceman, took about three weeks to make (and is a replica of a lamp Gerbrandt found).

It’s mainly made of packed snow, with an astronaut helmet made of ice molded from a yoga ball and illuminated by a light underneath it. In its gloved hand, it carries a white, hand-painted flag with a bright red heart. Gerbrandt has titled his handiwork: “In the Name of Love.”

“It’s like when an astronaut goes to the moon and (plants) the American flag,” he said. “It’s kind of claiming this world, this piece of land, in the name of love.”

Gerbrandt said he felt the need to include a positive message in his sculpting this year, after watching people become divided amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when unity was so clearly needed, troubled him.

“That was definitely something that I was intentional about. I’ve felt kind of sickened by a lot of the negativity that’s come along with, I don’t know whether it’s fear or just being in the unknown of things right now. But there’s a lot of feelings of negativity and division out there, and it just kind of sickens me,” he said.

“So I really wanted to put that the answer out there, and that it is love, and more of that is what we all need.”

Passersby by have already stopped to admire Gerbrandt’s work and provided words of encouragement while he carved; a sign, possibly, the sculpture’s ability to inspire goodwill is already in motion.

“It’s just not something you really do see often, and I think it’s a very Winnipeg thing, too,” he said. “Just people going out and bracing the elements and making something spectacular out of it.”

While many carving snow around the city are novice hobbyists, for others, it’s a year-round family affair.

Gary Tessier and Madeleine Vrignon are the couple behind the giant Dumbo snow sculpture currently sitting in a Grenfell Boulevard yard, but they’re also responsible for many of the snow sculptures that have cropped up around Winnipeg over the years.

Vrignon is a full-time sculptor and Tessier, while retired, held the same profession for nearly 40 years. Their two sons are also masters of the craft.

Tessier and Vrignon have plans to put together other snow sculptures across the city in the coming weeks.

“For me, personally, it’s exercise — it’s exercising both the body and the mind. The ones for the kids, they’re just fun to do. The other pieces I do… they’re expressions of ideas and things that we want to do,” Tessier said.

The family has sculpted competitively around the world, and winter is a great opportunity to sharpen their skills with a forgiving material.

“Working in a larger format like this, it’s a great way to test out some ideas, and there’s no other material where we can work on pieces that are so large in such little time,” Tessier said.

Sometimes, the piece will last as long as three months; other, rarer times, Tessier said, they haven’t been able to finish a piece before it began to melt.

The beauty of the medium is it’s temporary, and the materials return to the artists every year, he added.

“Snow is just a material that allows us to work very big, very quickly, broadly speaking. So it’s fun from that perspective.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca