Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

My friend Patricia Leguen,* the renowned Saskatoon sculptor, has just returned from Italy where she represented Canada at two international snow sculpture competitions with her team-mate Helena Bangert from Amsterdam. Patricia won first place and jury choice in Cortina d’Ampezzo on 22 January 2010 at the International Snow Sculpture Festival in a competition against nine other teams. The event’s theme was skiing, movement, and speed—as the world female downhill skiing championships were taking place at the same time. Patricia’s design, Schuss, was carved out of a 10-ft. cube (3 x 3 x 3 meters) of snow over three days in 25 person-hours.

On 24 January, Team Canada headed to San Martino di Castrozza to the 7th International Snow Sculpture Symposium (26-30 January 2010) to carve another 10-ft cube of snow in 3.5 days. The snow block was very hard and icy and, since no chain saws were allowed, it took 34 person-hours to carve the sculpture entitled Winged Victory, a tribute to the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Their sculpture won third place, with Italy second and Russia first.

*You often meet the most remarkable people when you travel. In June of 2003 I was on my way to an Icograda board meeting and the launch of the Icograda Archives in Brighton, U.K. Patricia was en route to a sand-sculpting event in Belgium (where she and a female colleague from Bellingham finessed a 60-ft.-high sculpture that “the guys were afraid to ascend.”) As fate would have it, we were both upgraded to 1st class on the Toronto-London flight… and so a seven-hour conversation as seat-mates began an interesting and surprisingly enduring friendship—I’ve had the chance to follow Patricia’s winning streak (she’s one of the world’s top ice, snow, sand, and fire sculptors) ever since.

Photos © 2010 Patricia Leguen: the finished Schuss with Patricia alongside; the finished Winged Victory.