LA Ice Art

Ice Sculptures and the city of Los Angeles

LA ICE ART is a Los Angeles based ice sculpture company created and run by ice artist Rex Covington, who has lived in California all his life. In business for more than twenty years after starting out in a Beverly Hills Restaurant called RJ's, he now sculpts and delivers all type and size ice creations to all cities in and around LA county and beyond. As a center point of geographic operation, Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Century City and Culver City represent the core of affluent parties that utilize ice bars and centerpiece ice sculptures. To the west, with iconic landmarks such as UCLA and the Playboy mansion, are Westwood, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Venice, Topanga Canyon and Malibu. Elegant parties with ocean views make ice sculptures look right at home and a delivery trek up the PCH alongside the ocean is a beautiful place to be working. Not to exclude the other beach cities of LA that we service with sculptures like an ice luge, which is used for pouring drinks down, there is Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, El Segundo, Hermosa Beach and Marina Del Rey. These areas seem to have many yacht clubs, country clubs, and ocean facing hotels that cater well to upscale weddings, Barmitzvas and other special events that so often require a beautiful ice sculpture to punctuate the importance of the occasion. A special event is an opportunity for fun that lasts a lifetime. Since the early days of Rex Covington making ice sculptures in LA, the behemoth known as Hollywood has been calling with interesting requests for ice props and sculptures. Things like a 9' tall butterfly for a Mariah Carey music video or ten Richelieu lions to be exploded by machine gun fire in a scene from the movie Spawn. All the fun things that an LA ice artist loves to do. Industry studios in Hollywood, Burbank, Universal City, Studio City, Glendale, and Santa Clarita represent a few of the places that have filmed ice sculptures by Rex Covington. Others cities with sound stages that have created a variety of media applications with ice sculptures are North Hollywood, Silver Lake, Hawthorne, Los Feliz, Echo Park, West Hollywood, Canoga Park and Northridge. When the studios include custom ice sculptures in their media, thousands of people across the US see them. This makes industry credits for ice sculpting companies, like LA ICE ART, all the more gratifying. Such was the case when the season finale of Desperate Housewives, an ABC/Disney production, aired in June 2008. Interestingly, 19 cherubs were identically crafted for the episodes' production. The multiple scenes that connected with the ice cherub plot proved to be very funny, and, coincidentally, not far from the reality of ordering a wedding ice sculpture. (Edited short video on this site.) Wedding ice sculptures will always be popular because brides and grooms love them. Some times the groom wants his favorite movie characters in ice, like R2D2 & C3PO from Star Wars. Sometimes the bride wants an ice sculpture of two leaping dolphin or a three-tiered ice cake with strawberries frozen inside, but many times it's one of the parents who decides that the kids need a traditional ice heart with monogram or two large graceful kissing swans lit in pink and blue. These special events take place everywhere including the LA mid cities such as Gardena, Commerce, Bell Flower, City of Industry, Costa Mesa and the LAX area. I take beautiful ice sculptures to the inland cities all the time as well. Trips to Pasadena, Eagle Rock, Montebello, Palmdale and even further to San Bernardino, Riverside, Arrow Head, Palm Springs and Joshua Tree happen frequently, and why shouldn't they. Not only the affluent can afford Ice sculptures. 29 Palms, a small city in the high desert just east of Joshua Tree has the largest marine base in California. An officer called me for a 4' Marine logo for the Generals visit. I spent the entire day on the base with machine guns and heavy artillery equipment all around me. It was uncomfortable, but the general was happy and that was my purpose. Rex Covington and LA ICE ART have tried very hard, over the years, to keep the ice sculpture prices fair and competitively priced. There are 5 or 6 competent ice sculpture companies in and around Los Angeles, if you include Long Beach and Anaheim, and we compete now and then over jobs. They do good work and we all make a living. I'll let you decide the importance of ice artistry from the photos for yourself. One difference between LA ICE ART and many of our competitors is that we do not employ the use of computer-controlled routers or machine made sculptures and logos. Everything is done with calculated artistry. Our design tools include a straightedge, tape measure, compass and protractor. This company focuses on ice art. The location of the icehouse and carving studio for LA ICE ART is Inglewood. Almost across the street from Randy's Donuts on Manchester Blvd., a Hollywood movie landmark, this fully equipped ice sculpture studio has a great location for a spread out place like Los Angeles. We find that being centrally located and near a major freeway (405) is a tremendous advantage. The area is zoned for light industrial work, which ice sculpting is considered, and provides a convenient launching point for ice deliveries to famous locations in Downtown Los Angeles like Staples Center, the Athletic Club or Alvera Street. Deliveries of large or fragile ice sculptures are easy to Hancock Park and West Hollywood, as well as to the south bay cities like Torrance, San Pedro, Rancho Palos Verdes, Huntington Beach, Newport and Laguna Beach. Being close to my house in Westchester near LMU doesn't hurt as well says ice artist Rex Covington. Ice sculpture blocks must be clear and that means using Clinebell carving blocks. These perfectly clear blocks of ice are 300 lbs. and measure 20"x 40"x 10", which is the typical size of a one block ice sculpture like a swan or cherub. You could say they are the industry standard and so LA ICE ART is equipped to manufacture enough to meet our demand which usually doesn't exceed our manufacturing maximum of 20 blocks a week. Of course we house 50 or so ice blocks in the walk-in freezer so that we'll always be ready for a large scale event or film premiere party like Superman Returns that may require two or more large ice bars, and an ice fortress or a Van Halen video that requires lots of ice furniture sculptures to simulate the ice hotel in Jakkassjarvi Sweden. Large ice sculptures require grafting ice blocks together and then refreezing them to form massive blocks which are then sculpted into polar bears, ice bars and, occasionally, a Lexus RX400h automobile. Aside from the glamour of Hollywood, Los Angeles has a very populated and thriving sister community that we affectionately call "the Valley". The San Fernando valley, which lies 30 minutes to the North and uses a whole lot of ice sculptures, includes cozy and well to do cities like Van Nuys, Encino, Sherman Oaks, Whittier, Reseda, Chatsworth and Hidden Hills. There are ice companies with ice sculptors that favor the valley, and they do quite well. For our part, the LA side will always rule because it has the culture, the glamour, and the famous venues where ice sculptures just seem to belong like the Sky Bar or House of Blues on the Sunset strip. We do, however, deliver to the valley all the time because a good ice sculpture company will be called upon to deliver their ice creations far and wide. Such is the nature of demand in the marketplace. LA ICE ART delivers ice sculptures to all these cities mentioned, but often reaches further to Woodland Hills, Granada Hills, Canyon Country, Agoura Hills, Porter Ranch, Sylmar, Westlake and Oxnard, which is in Ventura County. Long-range ice sculpture deliveries usually require refrigerated trucks or freezer trucks. These rolling storage containers keep our precious cargo well below the freezing point and enable deliveries of exquisite ice displays, ice bars and luge ice sculptures to places like Santa Barbara, Ojai, San Luis Obispo and San Francisco to the North. Ice sculptures delivered far to the South have included San Diego, La Jolla and Temecula. For a large or interesting job, we'll be happy to travel. Please feel free to call us for a quote, or click on the contact button to e-mail the ice artist, Rex Covington.