By Margie O’loughlin
You may have seen John Njoes around the neighborhood. He’s lived in the 55406 zip code nearly all of his life, and has been a Longfellow resident since 1984. After more than 15 years of donning his handyman hat, Njoes started his career as a realtor specializing in residential sales. He said, “I was doing a lot of remodeling work, and decided to make a pivot to real estate during COVID. I’ve always loved working with people, and I love old houses.”
Njoes is also a person who loves cold weather and all things winter. For a few days each January, he exchanges his Sotheby’s Realtor’s vest for a thick parka as the St. Paul Winter Carnival Ice Carving Contest unfolds. Njoes said, “Ice carving is a pretty obscure art, special to the Midwest. When people grumble about how much they hate the long months of winter, we’re just getting ready for our favorite time of year.”
Team John
The “we” he’s referring to is his ice carving team: Team John. The other two team members are also named John (John Nusser-Cooper and John Matis), and they all graduated from South High School. Njoes said, “We’ve been competing as a team in the Winter Carnival for more than 20 years. Every Thanksgiving, we get together and decide what we want to carve next.”
This year, they’ll be carving a giant scale with symbolic objects on it that throw the scale out of balance. All three team members have a young child, and feel the sometimes conflicting demands of parenthood and their respective careers/interests pulling them this way and that.
Each team received 10 blocks of clear, shining ice weighing 300 pounds apiece. As Team John has evolved, they’ve built their own lathes, cranes, and table saws unique to working with ice. Njoes said, “Ice carving is hard on the body, so we have to get creative in how we work with it.”
Having grown up in a creative family, Njoes was grounded in making props and sets for Richfield Flowers & Events, his dad’s flower shop. He said, “As someone who was used to building things, making signs, and working with stencils, the art side of ice carving made sense to me – but roughing out designs in ice with a chain saw was one of the new skills I had to learn.”
Design Criteria
He continued, “People have a hard time understanding why we put so much energy into something that lasts such a short time. Our House of Cards sculpture in 2015 lasted just 12 minutes before it collapsed – but we made it to the finish line. We took second place that year.”
What makes for a good ice design? The categories that all contestants are judged on are impact, attention to detail, technical difficulty, finishing, site clean-up, and whether or not the final sculpture matches the initial design.
The pool of entrants for the Winter Carnival Ice Carving Contest is getting smaller each year. Fewer and fewer chef schools offer training in ice carving these days, which means beginning carvers have to learn their skills elsewhere.
If you’d like to try your hand at carving ice, you’d better dress for it. Njoes explained, “I have two different carving coats, and wear several layers of warm clothes underneath. You need to be able to transition from working hard with a chainsaw to standing still with a hand tool. We often wear heat packs in our mittens and socks too.”
In addition to being flexible with clothing, a carver has to be flexible with design. Njoes said, “You try to get a warm weather and a cold weather option for your sculpture. It can be the same design, but you have different ways of executing it depending on the weather.”
Count down
The contest officially started at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 23. Each team had 48 hours to finish their carving. Njoes said, “There have definitely been years when we’ve spent the last six hours on Saturday checking the big clock on the Landmark Center tower, wondering if we’d finish in time. That’s the clock that judges use for counting down.”
He continued, “For finishing, we use a weed burning torch and a plumber’s torch to melt away any scratches we’ve made on the ice. We have to move all the torches, electrical cords, tools, bags, and scaffolding before 7 p.m. on Saturday. We also like to rake our way out of the work area so the ground looks nice. Sometimes we have to carve all night, or at least wait until the sun drops down below the City Center. It can be a real grind. Sunshine is as big a factor as temperature. Cloudy skies and temperatures around 10 degrees are best – but I don’t find ice carving stressful, even when the weather isn’t cooperating.”
The Saint Paul Winter Carnival will run through Sunday, Feb. 2. This year marks the 139th anniversary of the St. Paul tradition: Minnesota’s oldest and best loved winter celebration.
John Njoes can answer questions about buying or selling your home at John.njoes@lakesmn.com, but maybe wait until the St. Paul Winter Carnival is over.
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