By Bruce Karnick

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The Hastings Area Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Business Association held their “Show the Love” event all around the Hastings Area on Saturday, February 13th. An event that was designed to entice people to not only shop local but share their love of all that is Hastings.

The chamber promoted the wide variety of activities on their website. People were invited to snowshoe at the Hastings Golf Club, discover the frozen falls of the Vermillion River, enjoy a fully lit second street at night and take a hike at Carpenter Nature Center. Alexis Bailly Vineyard had yurt tents available to rent, local restaurants offered sweethearts a deal on dinner and many local shops held sales for people to enjoy.

Part of the downtown experience included music provided by Mark Gelhar of 16 Penny Productions. Gelhar played a variety of tunes for second street shoppers to enjoy and he played requests or did shout outs for tips. Most of the time, he played photographer for those that needed help at the ice sculpture near his DJ trailer. Gelhar told one of the event organizers that he would be donating the earnings from the days event to Hastings Family Service.

Inside Be Loved Boutique, Logan Cysiewski, owner of Vast Entertainment, set up his photo booth for couple to snap a quick Valentine’s picture. Vast’s photo booth is a unique, touch screen-based photo booth called “Mirror X”. It works like a giant iPhone, where the user can add emojis, select a frame or draw on their picture.

Outside Be Loved, Tom Schiller was busy carving away at a new sculpture, carving it out of a 300-pound block of ice that he picked up in Ellsworth, Wisconsin. Schiller went to culinary school before becoming the executive chef at the Lake Elmo in for 22 years. Culinary School is where he started his love of Ice Sculpting.

“I did the ice there every week for the brunch. I taught ice at St Paul College for four years, I’ve done a lot of competitions and met a lot of people,” Schiller explained.

Where does he get his ideas from? “It’s funny if you look on my phone, usually everybody has pictures of the kids and everything, I got pictures of woodcarvings and ice carvings, just different ideas things that I want to play with because I just started doing woodcarvings to last year so it’s fun, there’s so many things you can carve to see if you can bring it alive and ice is the hard part,” said Schiller.

His artwork sure had an impact downtown, people were checking all of his sculptures out and in awe of the work he was doing. What people did not know is, each average sized piece takes an hour and a half to two hours to complete depending on the complexity. The 300-pound ice blocks are 40 inches tall, 20 inches wide and 10 inches thick. In the extreme cold, they will last longer but once the temp approaches 30 degrees, the sun will have a major impact on their durability. Yes, his major tool for doing the work is an electric chainsaw, but he does have other tools at his disposal.

If you are in need of an ice sculptor, feel free to contact Tom at [email protected] com or call him at 651-428-8703

Left: Mandy Endres Vickney and John Weckop kiss behind the heart shaped ice sculpture that was constructed for the Hastings Area Chamber of Commerce’s ‘Show the Love’ event for Valentine’s Day weekend. Photo Courtesy of Mandy Endres Vickney. Above: Visitors to Downtown Hastings utilize the ice sculpture for a wonderful photo opportunity. Right: one of the many ice sculptures created by Tom Schiller. Below, Tom Schiller works on another sculpture in front of Be Loved Boutique.

Photos by Bruce Karnick