Each winter, Max Zuleta carves, saws and blowtorches about 900 intricate ice sculptures for weddings, events and festivals across southern Wisconsin. “If you’re working in marble or bronze, these projects may take you months,” Zuleta says. “With ice, it’s instant gratification. It can be made in hours.”
The self-taught artist is the sole sculptor of his Franksville-based company Art Below Zero, but he recruits friends to help during his busiest stretches – about 80 sculptures a week. He crafts snowmen, motorcycles, entrance signs, ice bars, luges and more, all from blocks of ice made in-house. The sculptures last nine hours indoors and anywhere from one to 30 days outdoors, depending on the weather.
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Zuleta and his crew cart dozens of commissioned icy creations to Kenosha’s Snow Daze, West Bend’s Winter on Main, Delafield’s Delafreeze and Lake Geneva’s Winterfest – this year from Jan. 28-Feb. 1. Winterfest is home to America’s Snow Sculpting Invitational and is Zuleta’s favorite festival. “It’s incredible seeing thousands of people walking around enjoying the snow and ice sculptures,” he says. At many of these festivals, he’ll also often do live demonstrations of his craft.
He began ice sculpting when he was 15 years old in Venezuela. While at a catering job, he saw a chef carving ice in the loading dock. “I thought it was the most magical, amazing thing in the world,” Zuleta says. By 17, he had opened his own edible arts company, which he ran for 12 years before focusing solely on ice and moving to the United States. He chose Wisconsin for its vibrant cultural activity and the fact it had only one ice sculpting company at the time.
Aside from festivals, Art Below Zero sculpts for private parties, corporate events and sports teams like the Packers and the Badgers. Zuleta’s daughter, a student at UW-Madison, helps with the business when she can, which often means setting up sculptures commissioned for Badger games at Camp Randall Stadium.
Zuleta also leads the performance group Ice Beat Factory, which sculpts to live music and light displays. Last September, he and the group sculpted for the popular Twitch streamer Kai Cenat.
“We flew out to LA, and we were just carving in his living room,” he says. “I think, ‘Oh, I’m old school – there’s probably three people watching us.’ But then they tell us you just had 220,000 people watch! It was wild.”
Through his creations and live performances, Zuleta hopes he can inspire a new generation of sculptors.
“People say, ‘Why put so much work into something that’s going to melt?’” he says. “Anything in an event is going to go away. The beautiful thing about ice sculptures is they make you appreciate the moment.”
