Red Deer sculptors turn snow into fantasy hotel<\/p>\n
Published 12:40 pm Wednesday, December 24, 2025<\/p>\n
Red Deer\u2019s snow sculpting wizards have once again created a frozen fantasyland.<\/p>\n
Dawn Detarando and Brian McArthur, who live and work in Red Deer County, were among 33 artists from a dozen countries to create this year\u2019s Icehotel in Jukkasj\u00e4rvi, Sweden.<\/p>\n
Cathedral Grove is the 30-metre entrance and main hall for the hotel and the first experience for Icehotel visitors.<\/p>\n
\u201cTowering rows of trunks rise like ancient columns in this woodland haven, while an illuminated sky pokes through the vaulted canopy, creating a maze of dappled light on the forest floor,\u201d is how Icehotel describes the couple\u2019s stunning contribution.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this sacred grove, every breath becomes meditation, and every moment a chance to be both lost and found in the stillness of this sanctuary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Work on this year\u2019s Icehotel back in March when ice was harvested from the Torne River. Construction began in November on the 30,000-square-foot hotel and it was finished in late December. This is the 36th Icehotel and nearly 90 builders, artists, lighting designers and art support staff collaborated to create the snow and ice spectacle using 5,000 tonnes of ice.<\/p>\n
It features 12 art suites, Detarando\u2019s and McArthur\u2019s main hall, a ceremony hall and 20 ice rooms, where guests sleep on warm bedding and snuggle into sleeping bags to keep away the chill in the -5C rooms.<\/p>\n
Detarando said they arrived in mid-November and spent 23 days carving Cathedral Grove.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe pretty much carved every square inch of the 100-foot-long hallway which has a 16-foot-tall ceiling. The average temperature for most of the carving was -20C as our end walls were open to the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last week of carving, the end walls with doorways were formed and the interior took on a comfortable -7C temperature, which was wonderful to work in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could finally see the light at the tunnel, so to speak, when the end ice walls were built, and the last week was about the finer details,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
This was the third time the couple have been chosen to contribute to the Icehotel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have developed a signature style of carving all the surfaces of a room. The first was in 2019, where we built a tropical room with cougars called Feline Lair. Then in 2023, we built Beaver Lodge and, this year, Cathedral Grove,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
McArthur is equally enthusiastic about the experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an amazing feat to be able to participate and work together to build this ephemeral hotel with a variety of professionals from around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Artists and sculptors were joined by electricians, light designers, light and heavy duty load operators and various construction specialists. Those trained in construction were required to install structural features, such as support columns and doorways.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe artists who created the art rooms this year were incredibly talented and have professional backgrounds in branding and advertising, photography, music, museum design, puppeteering, landscape architecture, interior design, public art, industrial design, sculpture, performance art and sand sculpting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt pretty lucky to be amongst these talented individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Detarando said that by arriving a week earlier than the other hotel room artists they got to know the building crew well \u201cwhich was a big treat.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really exhausting but exhilarating all at the same time. Each day, you could see the progression and how far you\u2019d come.\u201d<\/p>\n
As they were building the main hallway, artists and construction workers were constantly passing through and offering words of encouragement on their way.<\/p>\n
One of the Icehotel\u2019s attractions this year is a playable grand piano made of ice.<\/p>\n
Icehotel guests can drink in the ice bar or dine at the restaurant, which offers four-course meals, parts of which are served on crystal clear ice blocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Deer sculptors turn snow into fantasy hotel Published 12:40 pm Wednesday, December 24, 2025 Red Deer\u2019s snow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-371175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}