Frozen In Time...When Is Now?

This Ice Sculpture was winner of the adults category of The Ralph Steadman Best Of...Art Competition.

The theme to the competition was 'Now'. I thought I would create something that illustrates the elusiveness of that word...

SPOILER ALERT: A few people have mentioned that they don't want to know how this piece was created, saying that it would somehow loose its magic...... if you would like to keep the wonder, please don't go any further,... if you are of the curious type then please read on...

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First of all I designed and planned the sculpture and made it with clay...

I then made a vacuum mould of the clay sculpture with a sheet of recycled polystyrene...

I filled the mould with water and left it overnight in the freezer to set. When I took the ice sculpture out of the mould it didn't have enough surface area on the bottom to stand up properly so I went back to the drawing board and attached a piece of wood to the base of the clay model to act as a weighted foundation...

I made another vacuum mould with the wooden base attached...

Unfortunately, the vacuum moulding didn't work as well as I would have liked so I modified the mould with some waterproof material that I happen to have hanging around: Plasticine.

Fill it with waster and freeze it and you get an award winning piece of art...

The sculpture demonstrates literally, visually, Time melting away...