Sam Morris

Denny Wold, co-owner of Ice Occasions, and his 13 employees create about 100 sculptures a week from 300-pound blocks of ice.

By Mike Trask (contact)

Thu, Dec 11, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Denny Wold, 45, loves the cold and that’s a good thing because he’s in the ice business. He spends eight hours a day in a 20-degree walk-in freezer. And that’s golf weather for Wold.

He grew up in Frontier, Saskatchewan — a town of 302 people about 230 miles southwest of Moose Jaw — where temperatures dipped to minus-3 degrees this week.

Wold, co-owner of Las Vegas-based Ice Occasions, is an ice sculptor. From his unmarked 6,800-square-foot shop off Decatur Boulevard, hidden in the back of a warehouse complex, he creates those glistening ice sculptures you see at parties across the valley.

He taught himself to make a bar shaped like a ’57 Chevy, a life-size Anna Nicole Smith, an eight-foot liquor luge.

His business started simply enough. In the old days — the late 1990s — ice sculptures were made from rubber molds. That was easy.

But these days people demand more. The smaller pieces — like the McDonald’s corporate logo he was making for the opening of the on-Strip restaurant this week — are created with the help of a computer program.

He inputs the image into the computer and a robotic chisel traces the design to a set size and depth. Later, a human applies the finishing touches, smoothing it out and making it look perfect.

But the larger pieces require brainstorming. How do you make ice chandeliers? What about an ice pool table?

That’s when Wold gets out the chain saw.

Wold, who used to sell embroidery, started crafting the big pieces after customers began asking for more elaborate designs. He learned by watching others do it.

“I found that I have a little artistic ability,” the hockey-playing Canadian says. “I guess more than a little. I’m being modest.”

Wold — along with business partner Ryan McDougall and 13 employees — make about 100 sculptures a week out of 300-pound blocks of ice.

Each one — they cost on average $250, but the elaborate jobs can top $35,000 — melts away at a quarter-inch an hour, dripping Wold’s masterpieces down the drain.

For all the effort that goes into a one-of-a-kind sculpture, Wold says, it’s easy to walk away from his art at the end of the night.

“It’s decor, like flowers or centerpieces,” he says. “You throw the napkins away at the end of the night, too.”