Chill out with ice sculpting at Wichita Art Museum

It’s going to be icy this weekend at the Wichita Art Museum, but you don’t have to worry about slipping.

From a screening of “Frozen” to live ice-sculpting competitions, the museum will be all about slick stuff Saturday.

The event, “Ice, Ice Baby,” will be a free day of family art-making, ice-sculpting, film-watching and other fun activities.

Last year, the museum hosted a similar event in January, “Ice Capades,” which drew more than 700 people.

Perhaps the biggest attraction is the live ice-sculpting, when people can watch sculptors Mike Miller (returning from last year’s event), Erin Raux and Brady Hatter carve intricate sculptures out of blocks of ice.

Miller, known for his kinetic sculptures, said Saturday will be the second time in his career that he’s sculpted with ice, and “that’s kind of the fun of it.”

“I get these ideas in my head as to what I could do with ice, and then build a machine with that idea in mind, then the show on Saturday is kind of an experiment,” Miller said. “The crowd gets to kind of watch me experiment with the art project, and I really don’t know more about what’s going to happen than they do. I have a plan but I don’t know if it’s going to work.”

Miller said he’s planning to put the ice block over a blowtorch (with a funnel underneath to catch the water) and move it around horizontally to melt it into a convex shape – sort of a magnifying glass made out of ice.

Will it work? Who knows?

It’s all part of the process, Miller said.

“That’s one of the newer ideas in the art world is ephemeral art – art that’s not permanent or supposed to last 500 years,” Miller said. “It also speaks to another aspect of art that, for the artists, the end result is sometimes secondary to the process of getting there.”

You can see Miller, as well as Hatter and Raux (who opens an exhibition at CityArts on Friday and recently has exhibited at the Wichita Art Museum) from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. outside the museum.

Inside, the museum will host a free screening of “Frozen” at 11 a.m. in its theater, followed by a screening of “Howl’s Moving Castle” at 2 p.m.

Also, in the museum’s “living room” area, there will be free arts-and-crafts activities for families and children.

The exhibitions inside the museum will be free and open to the public, as they are every Saturday.

New this year: Food trucks including Funky Monkey Munchies, Sunflower Espresso and Little Lion Ice Cream will be on scene to add to your culinary choices. The museum’s Muse Cafe will be open and serving its full menu (and kids meals).

Lamphouse Photo Company will provide a free photo booth during the event as well.

“We say it’s a ‘Family ArtVenture,’ but if you’re an adult flying solo on Saturday, it’s still cool to watch,” said Teresa Veazey, the museum’s public relations manager.

This story was originally published January 24, 2017 at 8:33 PM with the headline "Chill out with ice sculpting at Wichita Art Museum."