![]() ![]() ![]() In 2018, he sculpted an 8-foot Venom celebrating the movie for Sony’s CinemaCon party at Caesars Palace. In 2016, Villarreal moved into a bigger shop, bought more machines, acquired larger freezers and made his side project, The Vegas Iceman, a full-time job. He worked as a butcher and sold timeshares at the Jockey Club to pay the bills before re-entering the ice sculpting field on his own, part time, in 2010. Even during the best of times, he admits, an ice sculpture often is the first piece of an event to be scrapped whenever organizers reassess their budgets.Īfter culinary school, Villarreal relocated to Las Vegas in 2006 and found a job carving ice, only for the Great Recession to leave him unemployed. Villarreal, 38, is no stranger to financial insecurity. Many Las Vegans, especially artists and entertainers, are struggling to make ends meet as we approach the first Labor Day of the COVID-19 era. ![]() “So once you start shutting stuff off, the eeriness of just being quiet is like, ‘Oh.’ So you’re just sitting there like, ‘This is being taken away from me, and it’s not my fault.’ ” So the humming mechanics in it is really loud,” he explains. “If you imagine, we have freezers and ice makers, and everything has compressors. So far, though, that’s mostly just helping him tread the financial waters.Īfter several years of growth and pouring his profits back into his small business, Villarreal has had to turn off some of his equipment for the first time. Villarreal has launched Snow Buddy, a new enterprise delivering 70 pounds of snow and activity kits for kids to play with during the blistering heat. He just hasn’t been spending nearly as much time in there this summer considering that corporate events, which account for 85-90 percent of his business, have all but evaporated during the pandemic. The ice sculptor with a rock ’n’ roll flair works in an office that’s a refreshing 18 degrees year-round. (Ellen Schmidt/Las Vegas Review-Journal) Villarreal has one of the coolest jobs in Las Vegas. Marco Villareal, who owns The Vegas Iceman, does a live ice cutting performance at Intersect Festival on Friday, Dec. ![]()
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