NILES — Feeling a little blue as the holiday season comes to a close? Well, the festivities for 2011 are already off to a cool start as Niles prepares for the seventh annual Hunter Ice Festival which kicks off Jan. 14. Despite the festival’s struggle for additional funding, earlier this year Niles Main Street’s Lisa Croteau said there would be no shortage in ice sculptures to be seen on the streets in downtown Niles. That includes a functioning carousel by the Grand Rapids- based company Ice Brigade. Leading the way, Randy Finch said he’d be bringing a number of members of the company with him to set up the sculpture.

Finch has been sculpting ice for more than 20 years.

“We were chefs,” Finch said of the company’s beginnings. “It was part of our jobs as chefs” to be able to produce ice sculptures for special events.

Where a lot of chefs specialize in pastries or certain areas of the culinary realm, “We decided to specialize just in the ice.”

Finch and his colleagues at Ice Brigade won’t be coming to Niles alone. They’ll be followed by a production crew from Food Network, which will film their participation in the festival as part of their new reality- based television show which will appear on the network. “Part of our goal with the ice sculpting is purely to take it to another level,” Finch said. “We’ve really tried to push with the mechanics, coloring, the precision … We want to make it to where other ice sculptors say ‘wow!’ ” Finch and his crew have been planning and constructing the carousel for more than a month. The sculpture will have four figures on it and will spin, he said. “After we’re done filming, it’ll be left on display so (the public) can see it,” Finch added. The project is not new or much of a challenge for the Ice Brigade, rather, right up their alley. “We do this sort of thing on a regular basis,” Finch said. “That’s what our company specializes in.”

Ice Brigade uses state-of-the-art technology, including laser digitizing, an ice lathe, specialized sculpting tools when working with their frigid medium.

Finch said the company uses CAD (Computer-Aided Design) drawings to create their sculptures.