Ice Heart

On the morning of February 12, 2010 designers from Moorhead & Moorhead, leading a team of ice sculptors and engineers, created a 10-foot tall Ice Heart built of masonry-scaled blocks of ice in Duffy Square at 46th Street and Broadway. By day, Ice Heart provided a kaleidoscopic view of the Crossroads of the World, magnifying and distorting its colors and textures. By night, it served as a glowing beacon to celebrate the Valentine’s Day holiday. Moorhead & Moorhead’s Ice Heart won the invitational competition, juried by representatives from MoMA, The Queens Museum of Art, Performa, and NYC Parks, among others.  

The Valentine Heart sculpture was constructed by Okamoto Studio, a NYC-based artist collective founded by the father-son team of Takeo and Shintaro Okamoto, which has produced one-of-a-kind sculptures in ice that have been installed in venues from the Rockefeller Center to the runways of Fashion Week at Bryant Park.   The structural engineering firm was Robert Silman Associates, which had participated in arts related projects throughout New York City. The lighting, a key element to bringing the sculpture alive in the evening, was by Tillett Lighting Design Inc., an award-winning firm specializing in the illumination of landscape and public space.