Minneapolis artist constructs 17-foot ice tower in his front yard

A Minneapolis resident took the Twin Cities’ dreary January days into his own hands, creating a winter wonderland while waiting for snow.

Nate Rylander is known for amusing his Longfellow neighborhood with creative holiday displays. This month, he spent five freezing days sculpting water into ice. He blanketed fence post stakes, artist canvases and fence netting with a constant stream of water to form a 17-foot ice tower lit up with colorful LED lights.

“I just thought, well, this winter, there’s been not a lot of snow, the lawn is pretty bare,” Rylander said. “I wanted to just, like, make something that’s festive after the holidays here, into the new year that people can look at and be like, ‘oh, that’s fun, that’s cool.‘”

The tower stands tall on 42nd Avenue near 41st Street, making it easy to spot. Rylander, 36, said he doesn’t mind answering questions from neighbors or others passing by, such as how long the tower will last (probably all winter) or how expensive this month’s water bill will be (probably just an extra $50 or $100), he said.

As a rock climber, he was inspired by the aesthetics of ice climbing, as well as a friend in Winona who farms ice. While this was Rylander’s first time trying his hand at ice sculpting himself, as a home renovator and abstract painter, all of his neighborhood projects share the same goal of making people smile.

“I try to tell people that I still have that same desire to create as when I was a kid. It’s not like that ever goes away. It’s just put on a back burner as adults,” Rylander said. “Whenever I can create something that elicits some response from the public I just roll with it,” he said.

In the past, he has constructed other eye-catching displays for the neighborhood, like a mannequin stringing lights that looked like a real person falling off a ladder, or a person lassoing another with Christmas lights. Sometimes he gets letters in the mail from fans of his work.

Winter gear, including a full-body snowsuit and running gloves, was crucial to the ice tower construction process. After building the base of the tower, he kept a hose on a low flow for four or five days, adjusting the flow enough that the water would freeze and take shape but not cover the sidewalk in ice.

The process wasn’t without mishaps. One day Rylander’s girlfriend turned on a load of laundry before leaving home. Once the laundry shut off, the water pressure changed, and they returned to his ladder covered in 100 pounds of icicles, he said. Once he got the hang of it and the tower grew, Rylander said he could use the hose to play with different spray patterns.

“At the base of it, it looks kind of like the Lake Superior foggy ice, or like clouds in the sky because it was a fine mist,” he said. “More up towards the top, when I put the water on faster ... it formed more of an icicle look.”

That means that the glowing tower, which Rylander will continue to shape as needed for the rest of the winter, looks a little bit different no matter how visitors view it.