As ice festival business booms, Jeannette company looks to train carvers
The work is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
With the proliferation of winter ice festivals across Pennsylvania and neighboring states, DiMartino Ice Co. in Jeannette is looking to train ice carvers to fill the demand.
“We’re busy from December through February,” said owner Ernie DiMartino. “We’re somewhere every week, and sometimes we’re doing two events in a week. One week this year, we did three different events.”
There’s more ice to be carved than there are carvers available.
“First, I reached out to carvers in other states and found that they were not available, so I thought I really needed to start thinking outside the box,” DiMartino said.
He decided to offer a training program in hopes of filling the demand.
“We provide the teacher, the tools and the ice,” DiMartino said. “When I was training, those were all things I had to purchase.”
Lessons are taught individually at the company’s facility and adapted to the trainee’s skill level and learning style, said trainer Jared McAlister, an ice sculptor and DiMartino’s operations manager.
“Everyone starts with a Christmas tree, because it involves a lot of chainsaw work, a lot of disciplined holding of the chainsaw,” McAlister said. Trainees start with large cuts and progress to smaller, more intricate work.
“Before that, it’s observational. We don’t let anybody just grab a chainsaw and start carving ice with no frame of reference,” he said. “The biggest part is observing somebody who is already trained to carve ice — watching the process, learning the order of operations, becoming familiar with how an expert uses the equipment in a safe manner.”
The tools are custom-made or modified for ice sculpting.
”A lot of these tools are very dangerous and can do a lot of damage,” McAlister said. “The training has a lot to do with safety and knowing the proper safety protocols, the way to position our bodies, the way the ice comes off the block.”
Because training is done individually, it takes as long as it takes to make someone proficient.
“Some people catch on very quickly, some take a long time; it just depends. Our standard is very high, so we take a lot of time training,” McAlister said.
There’s no test to pass at the end. The trainer decides when someone’s work is good enough to meet the DiMartino standard of quality.
DiMartino’s parents, Arthur and Joan DiMartino, started the business in 1968 to sell packaged ice.
DiMartino has been full-time with the business since 1988. It was incorporated in 1990.
Chef John Lakatosh, a neighbor in Jeannette, first suggested adding ice-carving as another revenue stream. DiMartino traveled the winter ice sculpting competition circuit with Lakatosh to learn the art.
“We’ve been sculpting ice now for 34 years,” DiMartino said.
DiMartino and Lakatosh, along with company employee Robert Higareda and Richard Alford, a culinary educator at the University of Akron, carved 12 blocks of ice for the first Ligonier Ice Fest in 1991. DiMartino Ice has supplied sculptures for the festival ever since.
McAlister, 36, said the ice company facility “was my day care.” A grandson of the company founders and DiMartino’s nephew, he said hung out while his mother was at work, doing odd jobs and watching the carvers. He got his first chainsaw as a Christmas present when he was 14 and has been carving ever since.
Although ice sculpting might not be a passion or a career path for everyone, it can be a good sideline, DiMartino said.
“I plan to continue a search across the state for other individuals who might be interested in working with us, and also to keep a (help wanted) sign up in front of our building,” he said. “We need more people to help us with the delivery of packaged ice in the summer, and then, when winter rolls around, we transform to the ice-sculpting end of the business.
“Even if this isn’t someone’s life’s work, there’s knowledge to be gained in the art form, and it’s a way to make some extra money,” he said.
Anyone interested in learning more about the training program can call 724-527-0011 or stop by the company at 305 Division St., Jeannette.
Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Shirley by email at smcmarlin@triblive.com or via Twitter .
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.