‘Ice Out for Good’: Art and censorship in the Minnesota snow
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Under an inky night sky, a group of artists gather in the snow at Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis. A poet and a cluster of snow sculptors are in the front yard of a home on the lake, where they put the finishing touches on a memorial to Renee Macklin Good.
“This seemed both a justice to these artists whose work was taken down, and it seems like a justice to honor a poet who didn’t get the chance to have this community include and honor her,” says Ojibwe poet Heid E. Erdrich, who was the first poet laureate of the city of Minneapolis in 2024.
Erdrich had the original idea for the memorial, which the sculptors have called “Ice Out for Good.” The sculpture features the face of Macklin Good with a blindfold that says “ICE OUT,” and it references two snow sculptures that were disqualified from competitions last month for their references to ICE.
“It is a collaborative sculpture showing Renee Good with a steel plate over her mouth, showing that she has been silenced and blindfolded,” says longtime St. Paul snow sculptor Dusty Thune. “But her story keeps on. She’s here to keep speaking to the community.”
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On the back of the sculpture many hands reach out in American Sign Language. They sign “Ice Out for Good.”
There is also a snow memorial wall etched with the names of “lives lost in ICE detention and the legal observers on the streets of Minneapolis.”
The snow sculpture has many purposes, the group says. Primarily, it is to honor Macklin Good, who was shot and killed by an ICE agent on Jan. 7.
Erdrich and the snow sculptors will host a ceremony and vigil for “victims of ICE” at 6 p.m. Saturday at the sculpture site at Franklin Avenue and West Lake of the Isles Parkway. They will project and read poems by Macklin Good. Erdrich will also debut her own poem for Macklin Good.
“A memorial to a fallen poet,” Erdrich says. “Considering the poetry community, considering everything we've been through to have this murder of a young poet just really touched me deeply.”
Homeowner John Larsen says he was happy to host the sculpture in his front yard. “This is something that's affecting all of us in this community, the sort of occupation of masked gunmen,” says Larsen. “I’m so proud of these artists for speaking their minds and creating this beautiful artwork that they did in the competitions, and really sad that they were destroyed.”
Censorship in snow
The new sculpture is a response to censorship that the artists say they experienced at the World Snow Sculpture Championships in Stillwater in mid-January and at the Minnesota State Snow Sculpting Competition that ran Jan. 23-25.
Thune, who captained the U.S. team House of Thune at the world competition, says their sculpture “A Call to Arms” was destroyed. The sculpture was a large sphere of hands signing in ASL, phrases like “love,” “unity,” “peace” and “Ice Out.”
“Defaced or de-fingered and then bulldozed without any word to the team, or any questions asked, or anything else. We had no idea what was going on until I got a letter in the mail,” Thune says.
The Greater Stillwater Chamber of Commerce, which runs the celebration and championship, said the sculpture was removed because it didn’t comply with the event’s rules, “which include an agreement to abide by the initial design and not use sculptures to make political statements.”
“The decision to remove the sculpture occurred during a challenging period for the city and state. We respect and understand the intensity of the feedback from the community related to what has happened,” the chamber’s president Robin Anthony-Evenson said in a statement shared with MPR News.
Thune and fellow snow sculptor Heather Friedli have started a GoFundMe to create an iron and steel version of the sculpture, a “Permanent Memorial for Fallen Protestors.”
“Iron being the lifeblood of Minnesota and a heck of a lot harder to sweep under the rug,” Thune says.
The front side of the new snow sculpture, the blindfolded face of Macklin Good, references the artwork that snow sculpture team Beez in the Schneez made for the Minnesota State Snow Sculpting Competition in St. Paul.
“Basically, our concept for our sculpture was all about ICE resistance here in the Twin Cities,” says Logan Thomas.
That sculpture featured a face with a blindfold and a whistle. The morning they were working on the sculpture, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti.
“We just decided to turn it kind of into a protest piece, and specifically write the words, ‘Ice Out MN,’” Thomas said.
The competition rules say that sculptures must be “family-friendly and non-political,” Thomas says, so they knew they risked disqualification.
“The competition doesn't really matter to us. What we feel is more important in this moment is to show solidarity with the entire city,” Thomas says.
What the team didn’t expect was for their sculpture to be defaced. When the team wasn’t present, between the end of the sculpting period and before judging, someone came and scraped out the “Ice Out MN” and smashed the whistle, they say.
Bystanders told the team that the people who did it were dressed in St. Paul Vulcans costumes; the competition is hosted at the Vulcan Snow Park by the St. Paul Vulcans community organization. The St. Paul Vulcans have not responded to a request for comment.
“None of the organizers have reached out to us that day or since on exactly what had happened,” said Siera Himmerich, a snow sculptor for Beez in the Schneez.
Snow family
Snow sculptor Alex Walton helped build the new sculpture. He had created a sculpture of a Labubu constitutional observer for the state competition, but it was not disqualified.
“I kind of felt we had to help them remake their vision,” Walton says. It’s also personal: Walton says he has family members that are at risk of being deported.
“Snow sculpting is great and big, but the impact of making a sculpture that had some presence, had some eyes on it, was really a personal narrative,” Walton says. “It can really be a little sense of healing to myself, with family, and in a state of worry, it was a way to try and say something without attaching their name.”
With Erdrich, snow sculptor Heather Friedli came up with the concept for the new sculpture on Lake of the Isles and the idea to bring in teams House of Thune, Beez in the Schneez and other artists.
“The snow sculpting family is a close-knit community,” Friedli says. “So when my snow family was having these issues with the freedom of speech and the destruction of their work, I said, ‘That ain’t right.’”
Editor’s note (Feb. 6, 2026): The story has been updated to clarify the origin of the idea for the memorial sculpture, and the artists who worked on it.
