WHEN SHE IS NO longer a girl but an Ice Sculptor, she will do everything she can to resist remembering her fifth year, until one day it surfaces during a work session that proves fundamental to the development of her Cold Art Methodology. She will be wrapped in a sweatshirt that boasts Multiversity of the Mid-North, nose running and hands redraw, working the ice with her file, and she will file harder because the ice is her past and then she will let the angle dip too much and she’ll hear the crack in the center. She’ll stand back and hear it growing, then use the sleeve of her sweatshirt to wipe away the dust of shaved ice. She will watch the crack slither south, jutting in several directions and sometimes resting, only to resume its arduous path. And as she watches the work become ruined by her hard hand, she will think of her father, how he was always so cold, how his hands would be cold, his feet, how he was always layered. What warms a father up? she will wonder, and watch her breath escape her mouth in clouds.

In an interview with The Frozen Frieze after she wins the prestigious Glacier Award for ice work, she will be asked about her methodology. In response, she’ll say she carves the ice with steam, which allows manipulation without rupturing the work. It is a skill she’ll say she learned from her father.