Brendan Schaffer’s Snow Campfire: A Roaring Fire Sculpted from Snow

It has stacked logs, leaping orange and yellow flames and a giant marshmallow toasting on a stick, yet this campfire is made entirely of snow. New Jersey sculptor Brendan Schaffer of Schaffer Art Studios carved it, coloured it and posed beside it, and the photographs soon went viral as one of the funniest pieces of winter art online.

Who is Brendan Schaffer?

Schaffer grew up in the hills of northern New Jersey and later moved to Cape May on the Jersey Shore, where he runs Schaffer Art Studios. He has won sand and snow sculpting contests across the United States, and also works in paint and wood. Today he concentrates mainly on sand, returning to snow whenever Cape May’s winters allow, and teaches eco-art to children as programme leader of the Wildwood Public Schools afterschool programme.

The snow campfire made his name far beyond New Jersey. After it spread online, it led to a 2017 appearance on the Travel Channel special Best in Snow. He has kept carving since: in January 2025 local station 6abc featured another colourful snow sculpture he spent hours making in Villas, Cape May County.

How the snow campfire works

The sculpture succeeds because its shapes read instantly. Rounded logs, carved with rings on their cut ends, form the base; pointed tongues of flame rise from the centre, glowing yellow inside and orange and red at the edges. The people standing next to it show its true scale: this is a campfire big enough for a whole group to gather round.

The final touch is the oversized imitation marshmallow on a stick. It turns an impressive piece of carving into a joke anyone can understand in a second: a roaring fire that only lasts as long as the weather stays cold.

The craft of snow sculpture

Competition snow sculptures usually start as a single block of densely packed snow, often 2 to 4.5 metres on a side and weighing 20 to 30 tonnes. The snow is tamped into a form, either fresh from the ground after a snowfall or made by machine, and then carved with shovels, saws, pickle forks and home-made tools.

The craft has deep roots. The Saint Paul Winter Carnival in Minnesota, first held in 1886, calls itself the oldest winter carnival in the world. Quebec City’s Winter Carnival has hosted an international snow sculpture contest since 1973, and the Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture Championships in Colorado began in 1990. In China, the Harbin festival grew from an ice-lantern show first held in 1963 and became an annual event in 1985.

Make your own snow sculpture

• Pack the snow as densely as you can, the way competition carvers tamp it into a form.
• Shape a solid block first, then carve away, working from big shapes to small details.
• Choose a simple, recognisable subject with a strong silhouette, as Schaffer did.
• Photograph it from close up and from a distance with a person beside it to show the scale.

For more winter art, see Faust’s snow lettering and New Hampshire’s Ice Castles.

Related reading: 15 Cars and Windows Transformed by Frost, Ice and Snow; The Bartz Brothers’ Giant Snow Turtle and Their Sea-Life Sculptures; Harbin’s 2015 Winter Festival: Illuminated Ice and Monumental Snow Sculpture; 24 Ice and Snow Formations: From Frozen Bubbles to Lake Michigan Lighthouses.

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