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#FreezerBern fame helps land local snow sculptor in international competition

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by Joanne Kountourakis | Thu, Jan 27 2022

Team "Colossal Resurrection" at the Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture Championships earlier this week. Northport resident Brandon Osman (far left) found local fame after transporting his Bernie Sanders snow sculpture (inset) to Northport Village Park last February.

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It’s an image etched into many of our minds: a masked and frozen Bernie Sanders, sitting crossed-legged on a Northport Village park bench, readily available for selfies and group photos with amused passersby.

The life-sized snow sculpture was transported to the bench in Cow Harbor Park last February by its creator, Northport resident Brandon Osman. Images of it, shared during a cold, bleak stretch of Covid, quickly went viral. “This is the energy we all need right now,” read a comment on one of dozens of photos that traversed social media in the following days. This year, the same frozen Bernie that gained local renown has landed Brandon Osman in Colorado, at the Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture Championships, where he’s currently representing New York – and the United States of America – in a four-day international competition.

Carving at the competition began on Monday, January 24 and will be completed this Friday, January 28. Fourteen international teams from places including Mexico, Ecuador, Germany, and the USA are participating by sculpting 20-ton blocks of snow into extraordinarily large pieces of art. Brandon’s design, if executed to completion by him and his team, will stand 18 feet tall.

It all began with Bernie
About one month after an Inauguration Day image of Senator Bernie Sanders made waves across the internet, Brandon took the inspiration of thousands of photoshopped memes of the senator to a new level, and element – the snow.

The #FreezerBern snow sculpture at its original residence, before being transported to a park bench in Northport Village last winter.

Brandon did have prior experience; he’s been making snow sculptures since he was a child and now, as a father of two little girls, Amelia and Juliet, uses his skills to sculpt characters the kids can enjoy: Olaf and other Disney favorites, the famous Easter Island heads, even a food-dyed Grogu (commonly referred to as Baby Yoda). “They’re not your standard snowmen,” said Brandon.

Last winter, Brandon singlehandedly sculpted the life-size Bernie Sanders figure in his backyard in about four hours, while the kids were sledding, he said. That night, “it got really, really cold and basically the sculpture froze over. My friends and I decided to take it and put it in the back of my car and ship it to the local park where it could be appreciated by people.”

After some reconstructive surgery on site (a lower leg amputation was necessary to get the senator into the trunk of Brandon’s car), Bernie was as good as new on the bench, a view of Northport Harbor right in front of him. The rest is widely documented, news-circuit worthy history.

The next big thing
After his Bernie sculpture, appropriately hashtagged “FreezerBern” on social media, achieved viral status, Brandon was contacted by organizers of an ice sculpture contest in Japan but felt, with a full-time job and family at home, he wasn’t ready “just yet.”

Instead Brandon researched more local competitions, finding one in Breckenridge (where organizers knew of his Bernie sculpture), and submitted a design to participate.

“And they accepted it. So now I’m in the competition,” he said.

In Breckenridge, Brandon and his team are creating an 18-foot-tall giant woolly mammoth, a sculpture inspired by recent news of well-funded geneticists looking to bring the extinct creature back to life and reintroduce it to the Arctic (go on, Google it).

Brandon is joined by his wife Rebecca, a teacher at Weekday Nursery School in Northport Village, and his two best friends from childhood, Aaron Blaine and Adam Cohen. On the first day of competition, the team of four was provided with a 10x10x12-foot-high snow block; rules permit them to go up an additional three meters with snow from the site. The mammoth will be the largest sculpture Brandon has ever attempted.

A snow sculptor’s dream
In a conversation with the Journal, Brandon seemed undaunted by the scope of his project. “I have it in my mind what it should feel like because I’ve been making snowmen my whole life,” he said. The time off from his day job helps, too. “I don’t have to work for four days,” he said. “I can devote myself to making this snow sculpture for four days.”

Despite having never taken a formal art class, Brandon was inspired by art and graphic design growing up, and found good role models in his brother and mother, who are artists. He currently works with clay sculptures and enjoys 3D modeling work, is a licensed drone/aerial photographer, and works remotely for a media company doing graphic and web design.

A Harborfields High School graduate, Brandon moved to Northport three years ago, he said, with a vision. “I was always so envious of the Northport art program they had in the high school,” he said. “Being someone who loves art, I really wanted my kids to be in that sort of environment and school. Northport is such a great quaint town, where it’s just these small businesses, and local artists can thrive… that’s why I was really attracted to it.”

You can wish Brandon luck and follow his team’s progress in Breckenridge on his personal competition Facebook page. Teams have until 9am on January 28 to complete their sculptures. Gold, silver, bronze and artists’ choice awards will be presented that evening.

The Osman girls pose with a snow version of Senator Bernie Sanders in Cow Harbor Park last year. All photos courtesy Brandon Osman.

Brandon Osman with an earlier work, an Easter Island head made of snow. All photos courtesy Brandon Osman.

An 18-foot-tall woolly mammoth, designed by Northport resident Brandon Osman, takes shape at the Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture Championships. All photos courtesy Brandon Osman.

An 18-foot-tall woolly mammoth, designed by Northport resident Brandon Osman, takes shape at the Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture Championships. All photos courtesy Brandon Osman.

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