Provisionary: Ice Fantasies
New York Press By now, everybody knows about so-called
celebrity chefs. But what about celebrity ice sculptors? They are,
perhaps, the next breed of artisan rockstars, these masters of a medium
once relegated to wedding reception cocktail hours and lavishly
appointed bar mitzvahs. They have etched their way, like an Emeril with
a chain saw, into the upper echelons of entertainment media. Meet
Joe O’Donoghue, 38-year-old founder of A-list ice-sculpting business
Ice Fantasies, and originator of the role of Ice Sculptor Superstar.
Consistent with the image, the first things that hit you upon entering
O’Donoghue’s carefully minimalist DUMBO loft are the smell of weed and
the sight of a long-haired figure who sits, Elvis-like, with his back
to the door. This is O’Donoghue. In truth, one
doesn’t picture anything, except for maybe a rotund guy in culinary
whites, when imagining what an ice sculptor might look like. But
O’Donoghue is an especially attractive guy. Lean and tan, the
38-year-old has long, sun-tinted curls, a mustache and goatee, the
surferish good looks of a Dan Cortese offset by the coarse bravado of
an Andrew Dice Clay. He’s so good-looking, in fact, that he has a
portrait of himself by pal David LaChapelle to prove it. When
we sit down to talk, O’Donoghue bums a Marlboro Red off of his
cousin/assistant, a fellow named Doug who continually supplies him with
amenities throughout the interview. In thick Long Island-ese,
O’Donoghue describes the beginnings of his illustrious ice-sculpting
career, which recently brought him, of all things, an Emmy award for
sculptures he’d built for NBC’s introductory segments to the Salt Lake
City Olympics. "When I started my company, I
put out a block of ice with lights on it and it started a traffic jam,"
he remembers. "It doesn’t have to be good. It has to be ice." But his
ice is good. O’Donoghue is an agile and imaginative sculptor,
whose styles can jump from subtle and sophisticated figurative work to
constructions of mammoth scale. His most formidable project to date was
the transformation of Harlem’s Cotton Club into an ice house for an
Absolut Vodka party, using more than 150,000 pounds of ice. Stints
like these have made Ice Fantasies de rigeur for some of New York
City’s most over-exposed entertainers and personalities, and O’Donoghue
includes names such as Donna Karan, Denise Rich, Martha Stewart, Annie
Leibovitz and Cynthia Rowley among his clientele. To
ply his trade, O’Donoghue freezes his own ice in a studio located in
the basement of his building, where special chambers produce crystal
clear, 300-pound blocks of ice. He creates his ice sculptures almost
exclusively with a chainsaw, whittling a block down, freehand, to the
desired shape, with only minimal help from finer tools and a blowtorch
for finishing. If you can’t afford a sculpture of your own (his minimum
order is $1200), O’Donoghue can be found sculpting in public at Tavern
on the Green on holidays such as Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day,
Mother’s Day, Christmas and New Year’s. "In New York you can wear Prada, and that’s okay," says O’Donoghue. "When you have a party, you call Ice Fantasies."
July 29, 2003
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