Meet the Winter Carnival ice-carver who wields a chainsaw in public

Even with all the tricks of an ice-carver’s trade, John Njoes can’t beat sunny, 50-degree days at the end of January. During the St. Paul Winter Carnival. Which is usually frosty.

Njoes does real estate deals as a day job, but during Carnival he chips away at giant blocks of ice no matter the weather. If athletes who are calm in the face of adversity are said to have ice water in their veins, what keeps ice-carvers going even as their creations melt?

Eye On St. Paul recently sat down with Njoes to ask. This interview was edited for length.

Q: I understand you’re self-taught?

A: Yes. I was raised an artist cause my dad is an artist and florist and is an events guy. Presentation is just cellular for me.

Q: What tools do you use?

A: Ninety percent of it probably is chainsaw work. There’s a lot of rotary tools, grinders, Dremels. Some of which are specifically made for ice, some of which are not.

A: Blocks are 10-by-20-by-40 [inches]. Multiblock now for the Carnival is 10 blocks per team. It was 20 blocks for a long time.

Q: How big is the team?

A: We have three people this year. Sometimes we pair off. There are things that take two people, if you’ve got big pieces and shims and stuff. It’s nice to have another set of hands there to hand you shims. Otherwise, it’s hard to work close together once you’re in that finishing stage. Because you’re throwing snow, or you don’t want to worry about cutting a piece off and hitting somebody.

Q: How do you decide what you’re going to make?

A: I personally am kind of a sucker for height. We try to stay away from super thin stuff because you don’t want it to melt or break, to make sure it lasts for the next week. And relatable subject matter can be nice — if there’s a real hot movie, toy or whatever. Sometimes it’s fun to make something that the kids all go, “Oh my God, it’s the Lego guy!”

A: It’s a big snail with a castle on its back. A little more whimsical than we normally do.

Q: What are some of your favorite carvings over the years?

A: A favorite one I did personally, back when they did the drive-thru [contest] at the State Fair during COVID, was a 20-block carving of a big phoenix rising from the ashes. It was 14 feet tall.

Q: What’s it like to create something you know is only temporary?

A: I love it. And I think part of that came from the events industry. You put all this energy into it, you set it all up, and you come back five hours later, and you take it all down and it all goes away. As an artist, I get it. It’s been my life since I was a kid.

Q: What’s the best temperature to work at?

A: I would say 5 to 20. Depending on the sun. A little wind isn’t bad, because your body heat’s right there next to whatever you’re working on. We built a Ferris wheel almost 10 years ago now and I think it was in the 40s by the last day, or part of it. And it was just dripping. Everybody was wrapped up and hiding from the sun.

Q: It’s supposed to be in the high 30s to almost 50 this week. What will you do?

A: Some people will probably take the afternoons off, for the worst of it. Anybody who has done it long enough can work with it. You can use dry ice to make it freeze to itself. Some people cover it up with a tent and keep it cold.

Q: It’s Monday. How is the snail holding up?