
As is tradition when the Green Bay Packers play a home playoff game, the US Snow Sculpting team is hard at work creating beautiful pieces of art to adorn the exterior of the historic stadium.
One of the men working on the sculptures is Mike Sponholtz, a Tisch Mills native, who explained that snow sculpting began in Milwaukee in 1985.
“My one partner was a judge for the event, and I was working with him in his studio, and he said ‘I don’t want to judge. I want to carve.’” he told SeehaferNews.com. “Our other partner was working for a sign shop in the basement and he’s a sculptor. He calls up and says ‘Bob wants to sponsor a team.’ Two years later we won our first international meet, and that was 35 years ago.”
The trio continued honing their craft, and a few years later received a call that any Packer fan would dream of.
“We were doing some work through Winter Fun in Milwaukee, and the Packers called up,” Mike recalled. “The three of us were always available in the wintertime, and we are all professional sculptors. From the first piece we did, they loved us. Now they call us for every home playoff game.”
When we met op with the man known lovingly as Sponz, he was working on a crowd favorite, a giant Packer helmet, which can be seen in the picture above. While many sculptors may leave the inside of the helmet solid, and may even create a face in the snow, Mike actually crawled into the helmet and hallowed it out.
“I had so many leg cramps in there, but you persevere,” he said. “It’s a love-hate relationship.”
The team is also creating works such as an ornamental “Go Pack Go”, and an artistic representation of a wide receiver catching a ball, and tapping his toes to stay in-bounds.
While many may think that the inclement weather we got overnight would be detrimental, Mike said he was more worried about getting snowed on, because then he would have to re-carve the helmet.
The finishing touches will be put on the helmet today, and the others will be finished today as well, with paint being sprayed on Saturday morning because the paint doens’t stick for very long.
The team is allowing anyone who wished to watch them work to do so.