FREEPORT

Time and weather are conspiring against Jesse Bouchard.

Right now, the 33-year-old full-time chef is sculpting and coaxing ice bars — as in, “Fill ’er up, barkeep!” — and martini luges from bulky billets of solid ice, to be installed at events in Freeport and Brunswick during the next two weekends. 

He’s working against milder-than-usual temperatures forecast for the remainder of this week and for the weekend, as well. 

This means he’ll have to change the design of the bars and thrones and other frozen furnishings, and that he’ll have less time to get them installed on-site before the warmer temperatures start wreaking melting havoc.

“The warm weather makes it more complicated,” Bouchard said Tuesday standing outside his South Portland workshop. “If it was 10 degrees cooler, it’d be fine. You just have to work faster and be more organized.” 

He watched as the sunlight and 41-degree temperatures made the ice block form droplets of sweat. 

“This is how it is in the summer,” he said. “You get used to the ease of working in the winter.” 

Bouchard is owner of Frozen In Time, a year-round ice carving side business in South Portland. 

Although professionally trained and a member of the National Ice Carving Association, Bouchard describes himself as a “hobbyist” ice carver because he still maintains a day job as full-time chef at a Scarborough assisted-living facility.

He apprenticed for his culinary skills at age 18 under Chris Merriam, the chef at the Sable Oaks Marriott who also makes his own ice and carves his own sculptures. 

For Bouchard, that’s where it started.

Ice bars usually are built based on an event budget, and they’re usually made using four, six or eight blocks.

Bouchard makes his own frozen material with a Clinebell ice maker, which he said produces ice of superb visual quality.

“Each block is crystal-clear all the way through,” he said. 

He stockpiles blocks for projects in his own freezer. 

Each block — or billet — measures 40 inches by 20 inches, is 10 inches thick and weighs 300 to 350 pounds. 

Numerous methods and pieces of machinery are used to produce art from ice: electric chainsaws, drills, sanders, hand tools and a Dremel with numerous, specialized bits designed especially for ice carving. 

“Basically, it’s a manipulation of the ice through saws, chisels and heat,” Bouchard said. 

Freeport’s ice bar will be four blocks — with an addition.

“They’re calling it an ice throne,” Bouchard says, “I call it a chair. It’s going to be a three-block chair.”

It’s one facet of the weeklong Sixth Annual Flavors of Freeport event. The ice bar — and chair/throne — will be set up on the patio of the Hilton Garden Inn on Park Street this weekend.

Bouchard will carve and create the entire works in his South Portland freezer, wrap each component in moving blankets with shrink wrap to insulate, and drive it all to the Hilton Garden Inn in a trailer. 

Then he’ll rush to get it set up and illuminated. 

A week later, he’ll make the same trip to Brunswick, where the Inn at Brunswick Station will host its second annual ice bar from Feb. 21-23.

For the Brunswick event, Bouchard will team up with Merriam, his former mentor at Sable Oaks.

“Usually, you can travel as far as 10 hours before it becomes a problem,” Bouchard said. “Obviously, summer time is a little bit different.”

Once on site, he’ll make certain the build location is level and then lay out the components.

To put the bar together, heated sheets of aluminum are used to meld the blocks. The warm sheets are placed against the sides of the blocks to be joined. When the slightly slushed block ends are pressed together again, the joint refreezes to create a seamless bond.

He recently returned from Vermont where competed against the top ice carvers in the country. 

He wasn’t looking to win — yet. This time he wanted to learn from the other carvers.  

Although the National Ice Carving Association is based — of all places — in West Palm Beach, Fla., the semi-frozen Northeast is fairly well represented. 

The current overall winner at the U.S. National Ice Carving Championships is Benjamin Rand, a native Mainer who now lives in Delray Beach, Fla.

“There’s a lot of ice carving talent in Maine,” Bouchard said. 

Some of it will be on display in Freeport and Brunswick the next two weeks — as long as Mother Nature cooperates.