Chris Banovich is dressed in all black and is holding a chainsaw. Normally I would run the other way when I come across someone who reminds me of a horror-movie character, but Banovich’s sights are set clearly on the large block of ice in front of him. He revs the chainsaw’s motor and gets to work, deftly carving a series of shallow lines on the ice that form a rough outline of his sculpture. Then he pushes the chainsaw deep into the ice like a knife into a soft pat of butter. Shaved bits of ice fly off his chainsaw in a spray of white, covering his rubber boots and gloves and ski pants. As he cuts, large chunks of ice fall away like a glacier calving. Within minutes, his sculpture begins to take shape — first the legs appear, then the head. To my relief, he puts down the chainsaw and uses a chipper to scrape away more ice and add texture, then a flat chisel to shape the antlers. He finishes it off with a burr bit attached to a drill and a rinse from the hose. After 30 minutes, his sculpture is complete — a reindeer for Santa’s breakfast at his daughter’s elementary school. Leatherface, Banovich is not.
What Banovich is is the only ice sculptor in the Truckee/North Tahoe area, and one of only three around the Basin and Reno. Banovich, who owns Tahoe Ice Sculptures and North Tahoe Catering Co., is busier than ever. In the last decade, he has seen a rise in demand for ice carvings, once a dying art form.
Banovich, 44, was first introduced to ice sculpting at the California Culinary Academy, where students practiced carvings on large foam blocks but never got to work with the real deal. After graduation, he shadowed an ice carver at the Blackhawk Country Club in Danville. For the most part, though, he is self-taught. Banovich, who moved to Tahoe in 1989, worked for the Resort at Squaw Creek as the chef garde manger, whose job is to prepare, appropriately, cold food. He went on to become the sous chef and executive chef for Squaw Valley and Northstar before going off on his own in 2004 to start his own catering company.
Until about a decade ago, ice carvings were starting to go the way of the VCR and two-martini lunches. The only ice sculptures you would see were carved swans or ducks at Sunday brunch.
“It was a kind of old-school aesthetic to food presentations or buffets that went away with the country-club lifestyle,” Banovich said.
So what rekindled the public’s interest in ice sculptures? Shot luges. That’s right. Alcohol.
“It saved the ice business,” Banovich said. “Now people are letting their imaginations go.”
Banovich has used his imagination to create some spectacular ice sculptures, including a full-size pool table complete with cue balls and working pockets for a party thrown by Larry Ruvo, the senior managing director of Southern Wine & Spirits of Nevada. He also made a 12-foot ice bar with swimming trout carved into the base and two eagles that doubled as shot luges on top for a private event, and for the North Face brand he built an eight-foot-tall ice wall with six luge channels and the logo of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics etched into it.
Since the economy has started to rebound and corporations have more discretionary funds to spend, Banovich has seen an increase in demand for his talents. Ice carvings now account for 30 percent of his catering business.
It’s not just the alcohol that attracts people to ice sculptures, Banovich said, it’s also the novelty.
“They’re out of the norm,” he said. “When you see a totally cool art form that you don’t see every day, that’s where it pops. It brings out the kids in adults and the kids in kids.”
Until about two months ago, Banovich did all of his carvings outside, which was fine in the winter but not so great in the summer. Now he has an ice studio next to his catering kitchen in Kings Beach’s industrial area. On the day I was visiting him, his 160 square foot, zero-degree freezer, which he recently installed, had 30 ice blocks in it, each 20 inches wide by 40 inches tall and weighing 350 pounds. It takes three days to make two blocks of ice in his new Clinebell ice maker, which holds a total of 80 gallons of water and pumps out impurities and oxygen to produce crystal clear ice. In other words, Banovich is constantly making ice. But this is still preferable to driving to Reno to buy $80 ice blocks, which is what Banovich had been doing for the last 23 years.
Before he starts working on a sculpture, Banovich must first let the ice block sit in his 35-degree studio for two hours to temper and soften. Then he has about a three- to four-hour window to sculpt before the ice gets too soft to carve. But that’s usually enough time. The average sculpture takes Banovich two to three hours to complete. If something takes longer, like the pool table (which took almost nine hours), he will put it back in the freezer to refreeze and then start again.
After all the work Banovich puts into a sculpture, doesn’t it bother him that it’s only going to melt away? That it’s all temporary?
“To me, it’s all part of the evolution,” said Banovich, noting that a sculpture can last up to two weeks if kept out of the sun and elements. “I love how it changes character throughout the melting stages. I think it’s pretty cool.”
Forget the horror movie character, I decide. Banovich is a Buddhist master.
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