A wind blew in from the southeast Friday bringing ice to Madison! The creative folks from Art Below Zero — which, by the way, is located in Franksville, Wisconsin — were at Hilldale Mall installing an Ice Bar at Cafe Hollander.
With apologies to Eugene O’Neill, the title of this post should really be “The ice men and women cometh.” In fact, when we arrived at about 10:30 AM the crew had already cometh and were hard at worketh installing the back wall of the bar. The text and images of various drinks like Rum Chata and Death Door Spirits were already imprinted on the blocks of ice when they arrived.
When the blocks were put in place the crew grabbed bottles labeled “Ice Glue” and proceeded to inject it into the seams. Since I have a chemistry degree, I had my suspicions about the product. One of the crew divulged to me that the chemical formula for this glue is H2O. It is apparently nontoxic so it can be used without gas masks.
The wall was then topped off with some special decorative pieces of ice. As you can imagine, all of the ice pieces are a tad heavy.
At this point the back of the bar looked great. But, decorative touches had to be applied to the ice and there were quite a few more blocks to put in place.
A Dremel was used to carve “bubbles” into the ice. Dremel, by the way, is a company that was founded in Racine, Wisconsin. There seems to be a local theme here. After a couple more decorative pieces were installed on top, it was time to assemble the bar where cold patrons could order a drink.
A lot more Dremel work and the bar is looking pretty good. It is still covered with “snow” from the Dremel work but that will be brushed off when all the work is done.
When an icy Lion is installed, the job is done, well, except for the cleanup. By the way, if you look closely at the left image below you will notice that the lion arrived without a tail. That part was fragile so it was glued on after the lion was in place.
All that’s left now is to come back after dark and have a drink, a warm drink that is!
